Good morning. Welcome to Exios today. It's Thursday, July 6th. I'm Naila Boudou.

Today, Metta tries to edge out Twitter and some mystery summer reading. But first, how

daily gun violence near schools affects kids. That's today's one big thing.

The 4th of July long weekend saw some 17 mass shootings in the US, according to the gun

violence archive, with at least 18 people killed and more than 100 injured. Many of those

were children in teens. We hear a lot about school shootings and the trauma that causes.

But what about children exposed to daily gun violence just outside their school doors?

The Guardian's Abine Clayton has been reporting on this, and she based her reporting on her

hometown of Richmond, California. Hi, Abine. So can we start by looking at this by the

numbers in Richmond? How often are young kids hearing or seeing gun violence?

For 2013 to 2022, there were about 2,300 shooting incidents in Richmond of those 40 percent

happen near a K-312 campus of the shootings that happened near a school, 80 percent of

those schools were elementary. So most of the shootings that happened near a school

happened near an elementary school. These kids end up being traumatized. They can have

really difficult time regulating and managing their emotions because the anxiety that comes

with hearing gun shots that comes from seeing vigils, it makes it difficult for them to

focus on school. And a lot of the times, those trauma responses are billed as defiant or

a kid just being bad, quote unquote. And then you have some students who respond to trauma

by kind of internalizing everything. You know, they may not really speak about what's

going on, but they also might start to exhibit anti-social behaviors. You know, they may not

be as engaged or talkative in classes. They may have been before they witnessed something

tragic. And this exposure in this trauma doesn't just happen from kids who see or hear

...