Cuyahoga County tops 200 homicides for the third consecutive year, for first time in 40 years

Daniel J. Flannery Headshot

cleveland.comDan Flannery, the Semi J. and Ruth W. Begun Professor and director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention, Research and Education, said firearm deaths are increasing partly because guns are easily accessible—and those guns are designed to cause as much harm as possible. “So, there are guns being converted into a semiautomatic weapon or a shoulder harness that’s added to a handgun that makes it operate more like a machine gun, for example, or the bump stocks that make the triggers continue to pull continuously,” Flannery said.