Fresh Air – The Cost Of Gun Violence On Black Life

Date: September 15, 2025
Guest: Tremaine Lee (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of A Thousand Ways to Die)
Host: Tanya Mosley

Overview

This episode of Fresh Air features an in-depth, emotional conversation between host Tanya Mosley and journalist Tremaine Lee about his new memoir, A Thousand Ways to Die. The discussion covers the toll of reporting on gun violence in Black communities, the personal and generational trauma it inflicts, the misconceptions surrounding gun violence and Black life in America, and the systemic and monetary costs involved. Lee gives a rare insider’s perspective, blending history, personal narrative, and frontline reporting to illuminate “the true cost of violence on Black life in America.”

Main Themes & Purpose

• Personal and Professional Toll: How years of covering gun violence, particularly as a Black reporter, impacted Lee’s health and psyche.
• Generational Trauma: How gun violence and loss reverberate through Black families, including his own.
• Objectivity vs. Humanity in Journalism: The challenge and necessity of reporting with fairness, not blindness, to lived experiences.
• Systemic Roots and Myths: The structures that perpetuate violence and harmful narratives, such as "Black-on-Black crime."
• The Dollar Cost: The economic realities families face after gun violence, emphasizing that the ripple effects go far beyond headlines.
• Moments of Intimacy and Responsibility: Complexity of being "seen" by those you interview, and the mutual vulnerability this evokes.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Personal Wake-Up Call: Health Crisis and Self-Examination

[00:38]–[06:07]

• Lee suffered a heart attack at 38, forcing him to confront “the weight of witnessing so much death as a reporter.”
• Quote:

  “For the first time, really, I had to look deep and engage with what was truly bearing down on my heart. And for me, that had been more than a decade of telling stories of black death and survival.” (Tremaine Lee, 02:03)

• The trauma wasn't just professional—it was tied to family history: Lee grew up with stories about his grandfather, “Big Daddy,” killed by gunfire before Lee was born, which left a “gap” carved into his family.

Reporting on Black Death: Professional and Emotional Complexity

[06:07]–[12:18]

• The difficulty of “seeing yourself, repeatedly gunned down”—covering stories of young Black men and families like his own.
• Journalism often becomes extractive, with Lee recalling being pushed to treat homicide as routine:

  “I literally had an editor once... say, 'That's just a garden variety killing.'” (Tremaine Lee, 08:13)

• The standard of journalistic “objectivity” can serve as a mask for ignoring reality; Lee prioritizes fairness and community-centered storytelling:

  “The kind of objectivity that we're so often taught and it's practiced is a blindness. It's like a convenient ignoring of what you actually see. I think what's more appropriate is fairness.” (Tremaine Lee, 09:06)

The Reporter as Witness and Confidant

[11:28]–[14:03]

• Interviewing grieving families carries profound emotional weight—for both sides.
• There’s a unique “exhale” when sources realize Lee will portray them honestly:

  “There’s nothing like...that moment when a subject...exhales because they feel safe right in me.” (Tremaine Lee, 12:18)

• He describes the pain of repeatedly witnessing “the look in a mother’s eyes who has lost a son to murder or violence. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. And I still see those eyes...” (Tremaine Lee, 12:59)

Black Fathers: Erasure and Stereotypes

[14:18]–[16:36]

• Lee often gravitated toward fathers in interviews, to counter narratives of their absence.

• “Black men...over index in participation in their children’s lives...But it’s a convenient narrative that these boys came from this place, so allowing people to make some assumptions about how they might be behaving.” (Tremaine Lee, 15:40)

Chicago, Narratives, and Systemic Violence

[16:36]–[19:02]

• Politicians, notably Trump, use Chicago as a political symbol, ignoring root causes.
• Lee emphasizes the pipeline supplying Chicago’s guns, the majority coming from outside sources with lax laws:

  “Every one of these guns starts legally...there are all these places where guns are siphoned off by the so-called good guys with guns.” (Tremaine Lee, 17:01)

The Myth of "Black-on-Black Crime"

[18:30]–[19:58]

• Lee rebuts the term as a deflection from systemic roots:

  “People commit crimes against those they're close to...it’s a fallacy, the idea that there’s a special kind of Black violence or crime.” (Tremaine Lee, 19:02)

• Notes media’s tendency to use such language to avoid looking at upstream causes: redlining, segregation, systemic deprivation.

The Real Cost: Kevin Johnson’s Story

[21:01]–[23:54]

• Lee recounts meeting Kevin Johnson, shot and left quadriplegic as a teen—struck by Kevin’s hope but also the relentless reality:

  “But after that...his [mother] started going through this list of costs that it would take to get him home... it was just to get him home. And it was a super expensive, special wheelchair. ... a new ramp ... a new outlet ... all these costs ... for that one single bullet, a bullet that cost cents to make.” (Tremaine Lee, 22:36)

• Johnson’s family was left with lasting debt after his passing; Lee credits Kevin as “the true reason this book exists” (Tremaine Lee, 23:54).

Childhood, Near-Misses, and Personal Risk

[24:09]–[30:00]

• Lee details his time at the Milton Hershey School, including a close call bringing toy guns to campus:

  “What if someone sees this fake gun and mistakes it for a real one? Makes total sense. Makes total sense.” (Tremaine Lee, 27:47)

• Connects his near-miss to the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice:

  “I can’t help but think about how Tamir Rice’s life was taken with a toy gun and zealous police officers...” (Tremaine Lee, 28:22)

• Covering Tamir Rice’s case, Lee was struck by “his chubby face that reminded me of my chubby face in seventh grade…” (Tremaine Lee, 28:51)

The Post-George Floyd Moment and Today

[31:27]–[35:07]

• Lee reflects on the fleeting national attention to police violence and racism after George Floyd; progress, if any, was superficial:

  “What we got was corporations pledging money that they never delivered, some perhaps never intended to...when there’s this new administration...the moment they had the opportunity to not fulfill those promises, they did so...” (Tremaine Lee, 33:24)

• Describes the country now as “the convulsing of an insecure nation... an insecure, racist nation. That’s what we’re seeing.” (Tremaine Lee, 34:45)

Final Message: What the Book Hopes to Convey

[35:39]–[36:40]

• For Black readers:

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with you...the true violence are the systems that have guided us to this moment.” (Tremaine Lee, 35:39)

• For white readers and general audience:

  “We can’t project this criminality and this violence on groups of people...if we can illuminate some of the issues and some of the systems, then maybe we can...get to the root and then we can start dismantling some of these violent systems that end so much life.” (Tremaine Lee, 36:08)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the reporter’s burden:

  “I was gathering little ribbons, little pieces, little pictures of every single story that I covered...I was carrying all that.” (Tremaine Lee, 02:03)

• On being a Black reporter:

  “You have to wrestle with seeing yourself in some ways, repeatedly gunned down, repeat your body, repeatedly falling tears for your death over and over and over again.” (Tremaine Lee, 06:32)

• On systemic, not inherent, violence:

  “I want Black people in particular to walk away from this book knowing that ain’t nothing wrong with you, right? ...The true violence are the systems that have guided us to this moment.” (Tremaine Lee, 35:39)

Timestamps of Key Segments

• [00:38] Lee’s heart attack and the personal toll of journalism
• [06:32] The burden of covering Black trauma as a Black journalist
• [09:06] Challenging the traditional notion of objectivity in journalism
• [12:18] The intimacy and emotional exchanges with bereaved families
• [14:18] Black fathers and the myth of their absence
• [17:01] How guns get into Chicago—examining root causes
• [19:02] Debunking “Black-on-Black crime”
• [21:28] The story of Kevin Johnson and the financial aftermath
• [24:29] Lee’s childhood at the Milton Hershey School and brushes with violence
• [28:22] The connection between a personal near-miss and Tamir Rice’s killing
• [31:27] The fleeting “reckoning” after George Floyd and what’s changed (or not)
• [35:39] Lee’s message to readers—recognizing systemic violence and hope for change

Tone and Style

• Deeply personal, empathetic, and unflinching.
• Blends storytelling, lived experience, and societal critique.
• Lee employs vivid imagery, humor at times, and raw honesty (“hating to have to do it, but show them that we are also like any other man...”).
• Mosley is equally engaged, bringing her own background and sense of shared mission:

  “I carry those stories with me. I carry my own stories about gun violence growing up in Detroit. And so this is deeply meaningful for me.” (Tanya Mosley, 35:07)

Summary

Lee’s appearance on Fresh Air is a powerful meditation on the devastations of gun violence in Black America—direct and ambient, historical and present, personal and systemic. Through poignant anecdotes and hard truths, he sharply rebuts the reduction of violence to pathology and insists on seeing Black humanity and resilience—a call for readers and listeners not only to bear witness, but to act.
This conversation is essential listening for understanding America’s fraught relationship with guns, race, grief, and hope.