Maryland’s new approach to gun violence is all about the data

It was April 2019. It was nine months after a man with a shotgun murdered five of my friends in the Capital Gazette newsroom. Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman had just declared gun violence a public health crisis — a first in Maryland. Nilesh Kalyanaraman, the county health officer, tried to explain to me what treating gun violence as a threat to public health meant.