Bullets and Barriers: How One City Is Trying to Reduce Gun Violence [nytimes.com]

^{Concrete barriers placed in a residential neighborhood in Birmingham have become a symbol of just how hard it is to make a neighborhood feel safer while gun violence persists.Credit...Wes Frazer for The New York Times}

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Birmingham, Ala., which had a record year for homicides, is trying to curb shootings by blocking streets. But the effort has come to mean something else.

By Eduardo Medina, The New York Times, Image: Wes Frazer/The New York Times, February 8, 2025

Bullets had already punctured the porch steps of Mel Aaron’s home in the East Lake neighborhood of Birmingham, Ala., one of the most violent cities in America. They had broken two windows. Once, they had narrowly darted past her teenage son’s head as he stood in the living room, again startled by the loud pops of a drive-by shooting.

So when she heard last July about the city’s new strategy to stem its escalating gun violence, she was optimistic. It involved placing large, yellow concrete barriers around East Lake, blocking traffic and hopefully preventing drive-by shooters and getaway cars from entering. Maybe this, Ms. Aaron thought, would “help, do something, anything.”

But after six months, the barriers show just how hard it is to make a neighborhood feel safer — let alone be safer — and have become a symbol of Birmingham’s cycle of grief, outrage and, often, futility in the fight against gun violence.

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