Overview: A survivor’s call to action
Founder of Too Turnt Auto LLC Shakur Smith reflects on surviving a gunshot wound to the chest and breaks down the stark racial disparities of gun violence in Minnesota. Rather than viewing impacted neighborhoods as broken, Smith outlines why real prevention requires trade skills, mentorship, and listening to young people before crisis strikes.
A gunshot can last less than a second. The impact lasts a lifetime.
I know that because I have lived it. I was shot in the chest. At that moment, gun violence stopped being something I heard about on the news. It became something that happened to me.
But my story is only one story. If we make gun violence only about one person, we miss the bigger picture: a community carrying thousands of stories.
The reality of the numbers
In Minnesota, 549 people died from gun violence in 2025. 119 (22.2%) were homicides, and 374 (70.6%) were suicides. Gun violence includes homicide, suicide, domestic violence and the trauma that follows a shooting.
Black Minnesotans were 26 times more likely than white Minnesotans to die by firearm homicide in 2025. Black males aged 15 to 34 made up about 1.2% of Minnesota’s population but accounted for 40% of all gun-homicide deaths that year.
Those numbers should stop us. Not because Black communities are the problem, but because something is happening in certain communities that demands our attention, our resources and our action.
The invisible trauma
Behind every percentage is a person, a family, a community. When someone is killed, the loss does not end when the police tape comes down. A mother loses a child. Neighborhoods lose a sense of safety. Much of that trauma reaches people never touched by a bullet. That is the part statistics cannot capture.
My experience has taught me we cannot only talk about what happens after someone gets shot. We have to talk about what happens before: opportunity, education, employment, mentorship, mental health and safe spaces. None of that excuses violence. But if we are serious about preventing it, we have to understand the conditions that let it grow.
Youth as the solution, not just the statistics
Young people should be part of the solution, not just potential victims or perpetrators. They know where the tension is in their neighborhoods, and what resources are missing. That is one reason I’m building Too Turnt Auto LLC into more than an automotive business, into a place where young people are taught trade skills and the value of a career built with their hands.
Prevention cannot begin the moment somebody pulls a trigger. It must begin long before. Survivors have a voice. Families who have lost loved ones have a voice. Those voices must be part of the decisions we make about how we prevent violence alongside schools, policymakers, health professionals and law enforcement, at the same table.
We need to stop only asking young people why they’re doing this, and start asking what they need. Somewhere safe to go. Someone who believes in them. Someone to call before a conflict becomes a crisis.
Hurting communities need care, not abandonment
Policy matters too. Community programs, responsible gun laws, safe firearm storage and mental health resources all matter. But none can work alone.
I don’t believe our communities are broken. I believe they are hurting. Broken things are thrown away. Hurting things are cared for.
My life could have ended the day I was shot. It didn’t. Because it didn’t, I feel a responsibility to use my voice. Not just mine, but the voice of survivors, families and young people tired of attending funerals and watching potential disappear.
Survival, to me, is deciding what you do with the life you still have. I choose to use mine to speak, and I hope our communities choose to listen, not with fear, but with action. The future of our communities shouldn’t be measured by how many people we teach to survive gun violence. It should be measured by how many lives we prevent it from taking in the first place.
Shakur Smith is the founder of Too Turnt Auto LLC.