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A work of comics journalism around the stories of four kids who have died in the U.S. due to gun violence or gun negligence—the leading cause of death for minors since 2020, and dispelling myths of the history of gun culture in the U.S.
Who have we lost? How did we get here? Why do gun-lovers love their guns? These are the questions that people across America ask every time another news story broadcasts a death from gun violence.
With compassionate, thoughtful journalism, this graphic novel explores the lives of four kids and teenagers and the guns that ended their lives: from incidents of gang violence to school shootings to suicide. These tragedies are presented alongside the history of gun culture and legislation, discussing the NRA, the legal system, and the racial imbalances in American gun violence.
“A bitterly beautiful book. Required reading, for the indelibly illustrated stories of lives lost and for how it dispels so much of what we think we know about America’s history with guns.”—Badiucao and Melissa Chan, authors of You Must Take Part in Revolution
“A vital contribution to the comics journalism canon: thoughtful, heartbreaking, and beautifully drawn.”—Joel Christian Gill, author of Stamped from the Beginning
“As gun violence continues unabated across the U.S., this book finally demystifies how we got here. Illustrating the heartbreaking loss of children, as it explains the history of gun regulations and how the NRA and the gun industry have managed to repeal them.”—Frank Smyth, author of The NRA: The Unauthorized History
“A triumph of comics journalism, letting us truly know, and mourn, four young lives cut short, while also illuminating the NRA's origins, the racial fault lines of American gun violence, and the surprising history of gun culture itself. The result is essential reading.”—Josh Neufeld, comics journalist
Camila Kerwin is a journalist who makes comics and radio. She’s a regular comics contributor to The Boston Globe and a founding member of the Rough Cut Collective, an on-demand audio editing studio. Camila illustrated WLRN’s Class of COVID-19: An Education Crisis for Florida’s Vulnerable Students, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2022. She has been a Producer at Marketplace’s This is Uncomfortable, Storycorps, and NPR’s On Point: and an Editor at KCRW’s Bodies. Her work has appeared on WNYC, NPR’s Morning Edition, Sony’s Cheat!, The World from PRI, The Miami Herald, and more. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from NYU and holds a master’s degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism as well as an MFA from Boston University. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her wife and cat. Soft Targets is her debut book. Follow her @camilakerwin