How Richmond Is Rewriting the Story of Gun Violence — One Student at a Time

““There is no public safety without guns. If guns didn’t exist, yes,” said Ra-Twoine Fields. “But we live in America, where there are more guns than people. So no, there is no public safety without guns. What we can do is learn how to manage it, how to live with it responsibly.”

Fields, a firearms instructor, armed security guard, and PhD student at Saybrook University is also the founder of The Holistic Agency and Crenius, two initiatives linking creative expression, public safety, and community healing. Crenius channels art into civic engagement; The Holistic Agency takes a culturally informed approach to defensive, medical, and mental-health training, treating self-protection and wellness as parts of the same system.

He doesn’t speak for shock value. This is the foundation of his work: teaching young people not to fear the world they live in, but to survive it safely.

Fields helps lead Control the Narrative, his philosophy for harm reduction and violence prevention in Richmond. The approach is rooted in community-violence intervention (CVI) meeting those most at risk where they are, interrupting retaliation, and connecting them to counseling, job training, and other supports. He’s adapted those principles locally through The Holistic Agency’s Weapons Program, a five-week course for teens in Henrico County and Richmond who have already encountered the justice system.

The goal isn’t punishment. It’s understanding why they carry and helping them imagine a life where they don’t have to.

 

“Anything Can Happen to Anybody”

One of those students is A, a Richmond high-schooler who joined the program after a gun charge. When I asked why he carried, his answer came without hesitation: “Anything can happen to anybody.”

He was seven when his father was shot and killed. Since then, guns have been part of the landscape, familiar, visible, and, in his words, “just around.” For A, carrying wasn’t about showing off; it was about surviving. “You just feel like you’re on your own,” he said. “That’s why people carry.”

In his neighborhood, access to guns is effortless. “Yeah, they’re easy to get,” he said. Violence isn’t shocking anymore, it’s background noise. “It happens a lot,” he told me. “People lose people all the time.”

Through the court-mandated classes, he said he started to think differently about what safety really means, and how much risk comes with trying to protect yourself in a city where violence feels ordinary. The sessions covered not just firearms but therapy, employment training, and conflict management, the kinds of tools that suggest another way forward.

Fields said that shift is exactly what the program is built for. “Most of these youth are carrying because of safety and survival,” he told me. “We remove our own bias and really align with them through that component building up their skills in how they approach their individual and relational safety.”

Control the Narrative

Fields’ five-week harm-reduction course, Control the Narrative, meets twice a week in Richmond and Henrico County. It combines firearm-safety instruction with counseling, therapy referrals, and what he calls wraparound services. Participants learn to de-escalate conflict, practice “Stop the Bleed” first aid, and unpack how social media and image can fuel violence.

“The biggest thing we centralize to our harm-reduction approach,” Fields said, “is why these youth are carrying firearms.”

That philosophy grows out of a broader model known as Community Violence Intervention (CVI), a public-health framework that treats gun violence as a preventable epidemic rather than an inevitable fact of life. CVI programs work by interrupting cycles of retaliation, focusing on those most at risk, and connecting them to counseling, job training, and housing assistance. The goal isn’t simply to stop one shooting, but to change the conditions that make the next one likely.

Across the country, this approach has shown measurable success. Programs in New York’s South Bronx and Richmond, California, have seen gun deaths and assaults drop by more than forty percent. Fields has adapted those same principles for Central Virginia, blending them with culturally informed mentorship and certified firearm education.

“There are a lot of conditions that drive gun violence, poor environmental structures, lack of resources, systemic racism, inequities,” he said. “But when we’re thinking about these youth positioned within that environment, most of them are having it because of safety and survival, and that drives their decision-making.”

For Fields, the real goal is literacy, teaching young people to think safely, not just act safely. “We build up their skills in how they approach their individual and relational safety,” he explained. “That’s the part people overlook.”

Understanding the Culture

Fields said one of the biggest challenges is separating the firearm itself from the culture that surrounds it. “It’s romanticized,” he said. “Through music, through movies, through social media. That’s why we talk about brand identity, what image are you putting out there? What’s it say about your goals?”

He doesn’t tell his students to reject gun culture; he teaches them to navigate it. “There’s nothing wrong with the tool,” he said. “It’s how you use it, how you represent it.”

In the program, that means unpacking the influence of music videos, social media clout, and peer validation, all the symbols that shape what safety and success look like for young people. “A lot of these youth feel like they have to show they’re successful, even when they’re not,” he explained. “I can have no food in my refrigerator, but as long as I’m outside smoking and have on the newest pair of Jordans, then I’m okay.”

Instead of condemning that mindset, Fields uses it as an entry point. “We’re not here to tell them they’re wrong,” he said. “We’re here to listen, to help them understand what those choices mean and give them better options.”

He practices what he teaches. “I carry a firearm daily,” he said. “But you’re not going to see videos of me flashing it on Instagram. You can be into the culture without it being tainted.”

That distinction, between glorifying the weapon and respecting it, is what he hopes will reshape the next generation’s understanding of safety. “We’re trying to demystify this idea of protection,” he said, “and build a culture that values responsibility as much as it values survival.”

A Research-Backed Model

Fields’ academic work and community work are one and the same. “My dissertation is focusing on exploring harm-reduction approaches to gun violence reduction and prevention,” he said. “I was able to realize that there were gaps in programming, specifically for the most at-risk population, African American male youth ages about 12 to 21, concentrated between 14 and 18. There wasn’t a lot of explicit curriculum centralizing the why — why these youth are carrying firearms, and pragmatic interventions to actually help them exist in their realities.”

He works at the program to answer that question and then built his research around measuring its results. “With my dissertation now, it’s exploring and doing a program evaluation in Henrico County and now in Richmond,” he said. “We’re using Richmond as a control group and doing a secondary data analysis to look at the recidivism rates and see if the program is actually helping to reduce those rates for youth getting new weapons offenses.”

The early results are promising. “We’ve only had about a six-percent recidivism rate over three years,” he said. “That’s not perfect, but for a population facing firearm charges, it’s progress.”

He’s quick to clarify that the program isn’t about prohibition, it’s about prevention through education. “You can’t stop people from carrying,” he said. “But you can help them carry safely.”

That pragmatic focus has drawn interest from the local courts and the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, as well as from community partners like the St. Luke Legacy Center, where sessions are held. Participants also train at Dominion Shooting Range and other facilities, learning how to apply firearm literacy, situational awareness, and medical response in real-world settings.

Safety, Survival, and the System

Fields describes the youth he works with as moving between two sets of rules, the street code and the law, each carrying its own definition of safety. “The street says protect yourself at all costs,” he said. “The law gives you that right, but when, and how? We help them understand both.”

That conversation, he explained, often starts with safety but quickly turns to survival, and economics. “Outside of the immediate point of safety, the next thing they’re concerned about is economics,” Fields said. “A lot of these youth, they like nicer things. Within African American culture, unfortunately, I have to outwardly present that I’m successful, no matter the lack of my success. I can have no food in my refrigerator, but as long as I’m outside smoking and have on the newest pair of Jordans, then I’m okay.”

He sees that pressure, the need to look successful when opportunity is scarce, as another form of harm that his program can help address. “We’re creating connections between firearms and employment opportunities,” he said. “Helping youth become certified basic firearm instructors, armed security guards, even helping them get their concealed-carry permits when they turn 21. All of these things reduce their chances of criminality and of being engaged with law enforcement negatively.”

Those pathways also build practical skills. “We’re teaching hard and soft skills,” he explained. “Hard skills like how to manipulate a firearm or stop the bleed in a crisis. Soft skills like threat assessment, unburying grief, and conflict management, actually understanding how to manage conflict and not just use the firearm as a first or second or even third option.”

Ultimately, the program aims to help participants navigate that tension between self-protection and legality. “The street says you need to carry for protection and safety,” Fields said. “The law also gives you that right. So how can you do both? The street says protect yourself at all costs, but the law gives you a right to use deadly force, but when, how, why?”

That middle ground, the space between survival and accountability, is where Fields believes harm reduction becomes real. “We know they’re going to carry,” he said. “So we teach them to do it legally, sensibly, accountably, and responsibly, not only for themselves, but for their entire community.”

Living With Reality

For him, harm reduction isn’t about denying that truth, it’s about finding a way to live within it. “We have to consider how to manage public safety and create it and sustain it, with the firearms still there,” he said.

A is still in school, still trying to find a path out of the cycle that took his father. “I know more now,” he said. “I know what it means to own something like that, and what can happen if you don’t.”

“That’s it,” Fields said. “That’s what this is about. We’re not getting rid of the guns, so we better start teaching people how to live with them, and with each other.”

In Richmond, that may be the closest thing to public safety we can build.