In advance of President Obama's State of the Union address, NBC News has launched "Flashpoint: Guns in America"-a special weeklong examination of gun violence, gun ownership and gun legislation. Taking a balanced, in-depth look at the state of guns in this country, NBC News journalists will report across "NBC Nightly News," "TODAY," MSNBC, CNBC, NBCNews.com, and more. The conversation will also extend across NBC News and MSNBC's social media platforms using the hashtag #GunsInUSA.
"At a time when guns are at the forefront of the national debate, we've challenged our teams to go deep inside these stories to get at the root of America's gun culture," said Antoine Sanfuentes, managing editor of
NBC News. "The goal of this project is to raise the awareness of these issues with a balanced look as our audience and this country wrestle with gun ownership, legislation and reform."
As part of this division-wide project,
NBCNews.com will feature an unprecedented investigation into gun deaths with the goal of providing a snapshot of gun violence and its impact during a recent holiday weekend.
Beginning at 12:01am on Saturday, Jan. 19,
NBC News, with help from the
NBC Owned Television Stations, began to track and tally every known gun death across the U.S., stopping at midnight on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Monday, Jan. 21- a day the gun debate again made national headlines as part of
President Obama's inaugural address.
Since this time, the network's investigative team has taken a closer look at the over 90 gun-related deaths that occurred over the three days; determining cause and, where possible, motive. The project also focuses on the communities where these guns were fired, and tries to uncover the type of weapon used, its legality and source.
This entire report, including a synopsis of each gun-related event, an interactive map that displays the location of each death, and other comparison data and multimedia, is available on NBCNews.com at
http://nbcnews.com/flashpoint, will be shared across all
NBC News Digital platforms, and will be used as a valuable data bank and source for
NBC News and
MSNBC programs and platforms throughout the week.
