Reporters Allison Shirk Collins, Elizabeth Fite and others interviewed nearly 100 people, including district attorneys, professors and researchers, felons, at-risk youth, social workers, police officers and more in four different cities, including Chattanoooga, to see how gun violence affects neighborhoods, hospitals, city budgets, victims and their families.

After receiving a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, Collins and Fite traveled to Savannah, Georgia — a city similar in size to Chattanooga — and bigger cities, including Cincinnati and Philadelphia, where officials and locals have experimented with several different ways of reducing violence that resulted in both successes and failures that Chattanooga could learn from.

Working alongside to Collins and Fite, photographer Erin Smith documented anti-violence efforts in Savannah and Chattanooga.

Ted Miller, an injury and cost expert and economist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, provided the Times Free Press with the direct and indirect costs of gun violence and firearm injuries nationally and statewide. His firearm and injury cost model considers 2014 firearm injuries and adjusts for inflation in 2018.

CREDITS

Reporting: Allison Shirk Collins, Elizabeth Fite, Emmett Gienapp, Rosana Hughes, Zack Peterson

Photography: Erin O. Smith, Hannah Burns, Doug Strickland, C.B. Schmelter, Tim Barber, Robin Rudd, Bob Morris

Design: Matt McClane

Graphics: Allison Shirk Collins

Editing: Meg Scarbrough, Alison Gerber

Web development: Ken Barrett