The AR-15 - The Gun that Divides a Nation

The Washington Post has examined both the devastation caused by AR-15 assault rifles as well as its allure for segments of American society, in a 14-part series.

Visual editor Kainaz Amaria, series editor Peter Wallsten, and reporter Silvia Foster-Frau, will speak about their reporting on  "The gun that divides a nation -- revered as a modern-day musket; reviled as a tool for mass killers."

The series can be seen here. A warning that many of the images are disturbing.

Kainaz Amaria oversees immersive, visual-first stories for the National desk at The Washington Post. Before joining The Post, Kainaz was Vox's first-ever visuals editor. And before that she was an editor on NPR’s Visual Team, where she had multiple roles in NPR's “Planet Money Makes a T-shirt” project, including managing producer, photographer and videographer. The project won NPR numerous awards, including a News and Documentary Emmy.  In 2010, she was a Fulbright Scholar and completed a short film on the Parsi Zoroastrian community in Mumbai. In 2020, Amaria was honored with the John Long Ethics Award by the National Press Photographers Association for her writing and criticism on the photojournalism industry and visual language. Kainaz began her career as a local newspaper photographer.

Peter Wallsten is senior national investigations editor. He has led or helped oversee four Pulitzer Prize winning lines of coverage as an editor on The Washington Post's National staff. Most recently, he shepherded The Post’s abortion coverage in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that struck down Roe v Wade, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. He has served as The Post’s senior politics editor, leading political coverage during the Trump administration, and was the founding editor of the paper’s Politics Investigations and Enterprise team. Before becoming an editor in 2013, Wallsten was a White House correspondent for The Post and a political reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, where he was editor of The Daily Tar Heel.

Silvia Foster-Frau is a national investigative reporter for The Washington Post who explores the impacts of America’s changing racial, ethnic and cultural demographics. She also has covered several mass shootings, including in Sutherland Springs, Atlanta, Uvalde, Nashville and Allen, among others. Silvia won the National Association of Hispanic Journalist’s Elaine Rivera Civil Rights and Social Justice award in 2022 for her work on the largely untold crisis of police violence against Latinos. She joined The Post in February 2021 from the San Antonio Express-News, where she covered immigration and border security, winning Texas APME Star Reporter of the Year in 2019. Silvia is vice president of NAHJ’s  D.C. Chapter.

Presented in collaboration with Wallace House Center for Journalists. Media partner: DPTV. 

• The Washington Post
• AR-15
• assault rifles
• Celeste Watkins-Hayes
• Kainaz Amaria
• Silvia Foster-Frau
• Peter Wallsten