Bullets and Barriers: How One City Is Trying to Reduce Gun Violence

Birmingham, Ala., which had a record year for homicides, is trying to curb shootings by blocking streets. But the effort has come to mean something else.

Bullets had already punctured the porch steps of Mel Aaron’s home in the East Lake neighborhood of Birmingham, Ala., one of the most violent cities in America. They had broken two windows. Once, they had narrowly darted past her teenage son’s head as he stood in the living room, again startled by the loud pops of a drive-by shooting.

So when she heard last July about the city’s new strategy to stem its escalating gun violence, she was optimistic. It involved placing large, yellow concrete barriers around East Lake, blocking traffic and hopefully preventing drive-by shooters and getaway cars from entering. Maybe this, Ms. Aaron thought, would “help, do something, anything.”

But after six months, the barriers show just how hard it is to make a neighborhood feel safer — let alone be safer — and have become a symbol of Birmingham’s cycle of grief, outrage and, often, futility in the fight against gun violence.

“The thing about barriers, bullets can fly over them,” said Annie Pearl, 80, who lives in the neighborhood of about 2,100 residents and is considering leaving her house because she cannot stand to look at “those ugly, yellow things.”

Some residents praised how the initiative — which also placed more stop signs and speed bumps on some streets — had reduced speeding in East Lake and said they felt safer with them.