A close look at North Minneapolis tells us more — but not enough — about child gun deaths.

In August 2022, I arrived in Minneapolis on a reporting trip. The murder of George Floyd and the resulting chaos still hung in the air like acrid smoke. I sat in a lofty food court in a desolate downtown mall, and hurriedly prepared for an interview, the picture of the city’s gun violence problem coming into focus on my phone as I searched the internet. As it had in most places, gun purchasing in the state had surged during the pandemic. So had homicides, 80 percent of which took place within the metro area. I was there to report on a suicide, and learned that statewide they were twice as common outside the Twin Cities as within.

Despite making up less than 18 percent of the city’s population, Black people were disproportionately represented among shooting victims in Minneapolis, accounting for 83 percent in 2021 and 2022. One of every 150 Black residents was a victim of a shooting during those two years, compared to one in 3,769 white residents.

My impromptu search billowed out further with each impulsive tap of my thumb. The history of redlining had relegated masses of Black people into under-resourced neighborhoods, where — about 20 minutes north of where I sat — children were being randomly shot, killed, and buried with impunity.