Happy book birthday to Camila Kerwin’s debut, Soft Targets: Guns in America and the Kids Caught in the Crossfire. Joel Christian Gill, co-author of Stamped from the Beginning, calls it “a vital contribution to the comics journalism canon: thoughtful, heartbreaking, and beautifully drawn.”
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.
Since 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of death for minors in the U.S. 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.