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Youth Over Guns produces research, reports, and organizing tools that advance the movement to end gun violence. From data-driven reports to field-tested playbooks, everything here is free to read, download, and share, and built with and for the communities most impacted by violence.
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Police shootings are gun violence. So is all state-sanctioned violence. The badge does not change the bullet.When a stranger opens fire in a school or on a street corner, the gun violence prevention movement knows exactly what to do. We name the victim. We hold the vigil. We demand action and we stand with the family for as long as it takes. But when the shooter wears a badge, that same movement too often goes quiet. The Badge Doesn't Change the Bullet exists to close that gap.
Co-authored by Luis Jonathan Hernández and Michelle Monterrosa, and published by Youth Over Guns in partnership with The Sean Monterrosa Project, this is a messaging and digital organizing playbook for treating police and other state-sanctioned shootings as what they are: gun violence. It is grounded in sourced national data and built for organizers, communications teams, and movement partners who are ready to respond to state violence with the same urgency and care they bring to every other shooting. Inside, you'll find the numbers and how to use them, the language to use and the language to drop, a rapid-response plan for the first 72 hours after a killing, guidance on how to talk about state violence without losing credibility, and concrete ways to stand with families. Published June, 2026 · Free to read, download, and share. |
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The gun violence prevention movement has to reckon with the police state it helped build.For years, mainstream gun violence prevention leaned on policing and prisons as the default answer to violence, often at the direct expense of the marginalized communities most harmed by both guns and the carceral system. The De-Policing Gun Violence Prevention Policy Playbook names that history and offers a different path.
Co-authored by Youth Over Guns, Not My Generation, March For Our Lives California, and the Center on Halsted, alongside organizers across the country, the playbook was built over many months through cross-organizational collaboration, a comprehensive literature review, conversations with community-based organizations and longtime organizers, and virtual community roundtables. It sets out to do three things: hold the movement accountable for its past and present role in expanding the police state, address the root causes of violence so communities no longer feel a manufactured "need for police," and offer a unified, de-policed policy platform that local advocates can put to work anywhere. This is an invitation to imagine safety differently, to reject the false narrative that ending gun violence requires more police and prisons, and to build toward justice, liberation, and prevention without relying on the carceral state. Published January, 2021 · Free to read, download, and share. |