(soft music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to The Newsfeed.

In today's episode, gun violence is the leading cause of death of American children.

We'll preview a session from the Cascade PBS IDEAS Festival to gain perspective on why this grim reality is plaguing the nation as we hear from a trauma surgeon and a gun control activist.

Plus a look at what's called due regard and the state law that gives cops authority to use their discretion when speeding to emergencies.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Today's top story, shootings in the United States are a concern that has reached fever pitch as violence remains the number one cause of death for American children.

The host of Revisionist History podcast, Malcolm Gladwell, sat down with trauma surgeon, Dr. Babak Sarani and gun control activist, David Hogg, in May at the Cascades PBS IDEAS Festival.

Hogg identifies the areas where we're failing and offers some solutions.

Take a listen.

- We're raising an entire generation of young people who wanna do things about this right now, who want to get active, who wanna go study public health, who wanna become surgeons, who wanna do stuff about gun violence and become public health practitioners.

But we are not giving anywhere near the proportional amount of funding as we do to other issues, to the issue of addressing gun violence for research funding at all.

And it's not sexy.

We need to have way more research on the issue, and we need to make sure that those kids who right now are going through school shooter drills and want to become those public health practitioners, that they can actually get a job studying the public health of this in the first place.

And that, you know, the great thing about that, we don't need to deal with the filibuster.

We can do it through reconciliation and we don't need 60 votes.

- Yeah.

- Right?

So that's a low hanging fruit that we could do right now.

We also need to have... (audience clapping) - I wanna establish nitsa for addressing gun deaths in the United States.

Not just gun homicides, but also unintentional shootings, domestic violence with firearms, and also gun suicides because gun suicides are preventable.

They are.

So we need to fund that and we need to look at what we did with big tobacco, right?

You can still smoke in the United States if you want, but we put reasonable constraints on it to make sure that they can't advertise to minors, to make sure that people know the dangers associated with the use of that product.

And you can still go and get it.

But people know what the real dangers are.

- To listen to the entire conversation, Check out the Cascade PBS IDEAS Festival podcast wherever you stream your podcasts.

(soft music) (upbeat music) A Washington state law similar to many states, has a provision that gives police officers more discretion driving when responding to emergencies.

We'll explain.

A new Cascade PBS investigation explores the complexities in holding police officers accountable after deadly car crashes.

In April, 2020, Pierce County Sheriff Deputy Eric Lopez responded to an urgent call of a drive-by shooting south of Tacoma.

Lopez says he approached a red light at an intersection, noticed traffic began to pile up and veered into the oncoming lanes of traffic, which looked empty before he saw a green Honda turning left.

The deputy was going 83 miles per hour in the wrong lane in a 40 mile per hour zone when he t-boned a car driven by Maria Teresa Magana Bedolla.

Bedolla was killed and two passengers were injured.

Washington state law permits first responders to speed and drive in the wrong lane to emergencies if they use lights and sirens.

Officers can be held criminally liable if their driving is found to be reckless.

The legal standard requires officers to show due regard for other's safety, which can be subjective and difficult to enforce.

Lopez did not face charges in the 2020 crash.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed, your destination for nonprofit northwest news.

Go to cascadepbs.org for more.

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