"Gunshots Were the Soundtrack of My Childhood"

The shared trauma of normalized gun violence in Black communities

By: Joshua Harris-Till

Some people describe the sound as a car backfiring. Others, popcorn on a hot fire. To me though, gunshots were the soundtrack of my childhood.

I was six years old the first time I was shot at. My friends and I were riding our bikes around the neighborhood, as kids do, when we heard someone yelling at us. I don’t remember exactly wha…