[Note: This interview was made for listening. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.]
Mark Munger: A tragedy took place on the north side of Sioux City this past month. The usual breaking news stories appeared, but the conversation didn't go beyond suspects and victims before it was overtaken by the next bit of breaking news. We think this is a failing of our industry, but we also understand the economics and, frankly, the difficulty of slowing down. But if we don't figure out how to stay with a story, we leave the community underserved, and we forget how to even have those conversations.
So today, we're going to try to do the difficult thing. Dr. Jeff Peterson, a licensed clinical professional counselor, invited me to his home. A quick note: the subject of this conversation is a terrible violence.
You are set up for Halloween. I like the Addams Family mansion.
Jeff Peterson: Yeah, this was a project that Michael and I wasted all this... It took several hours of work, but it is so much fun.
Mark Munger: Yeah, it's amazing. I like that you've also included... You've included the Ghostbusters.
Jeff Peterson: We've got our Ghostbusters. We've got a few others, and these are the decals that go in the vehicle that will be down at the Tyson tonight. So that, and then the vehicle has a big rack on top and all kinds of lights and music and this big inflatable.
Mark Munger: Dr. Peterson is a community-minded individual. He was preparing to greet trick-or-treaters at the Tyson Events Center downtown that night. He's also spearheaded a neighborhood Oktoberfest over the last five years.
Jeff Peterson: This would have been our fifth year of Oktoberfest, and it was a way to bring the neighborhood together because, you know, it was right after COVID. People were holed up, and I think we were in a divisive state in our country, right? Because we'd really seen a lot of [partisanship] in politics at that point, and this was our opportunity to say, "Hey, you know what? We can come together as a group, and we can do something fun." And it's not that we were angling towards any particular culture; it's just that fall is a fun time, and Oktoberfest has a lot of fun elements to it. So we came up with this Oktoberfest concept, and my neighbor across the street, Amanda, was one of the hosts of that, along with the neighbor next door, Lisa. And we...
Mark Munger: Amanda is at the center of the story that brought me to talk with Dr. Peterson. But before we get there, I think it's important to get a sense of her and this place.
Jeff Peterson: So we'd have live music. We had a full keg system where we brought in all these different Oktoberfest beers, and people would dress up in dirndls and lederhosen. And last year we did a bunch of contests. So we would do the Hammerschlagen, where you have to hammer the nail into the post, and we would do the gunny sack race and all these fun things. And it really brought people together. And I think it really created a new vibe in the community, in this neighborhood on the north side. In fact, Amanda even mentioned. She said, "You've really helped turn our neighborhood into a community again," and that was one of her iconic statements.
Mark Munger: That's lovely.
Jeff Peterson: Yeah.
Mark Munger: I mean, it feels like a warm and welcoming neighborhood. So, could you describe it? I mean, you mentioned it's north side. This is kind of old-school north side, Sioux City, near the hospital.
Jeff Peterson: Yeah, we are actually, what I learned, we are on the old site of the dump, so not necessarily the great side, but just on the north side of St. Luke's, the northwest side. And this is back in the day where they was the very top of the hill, right? Because we just have the Grandview water towers just to the south of us. So we're just on the edge of this hill, and this is where people would come and dispose of their garbage back in the day.
And then, of course, you have the famous Jackson Street, just a few blocks up, and then Pierce Street, right? So those were, you know, predominant streets historically that then had these big fancy houses, and Douglas was also one of them. The fancier houses on Douglas, a little bit further south. But once we got into this area, it was more of a kind of a working-class area, and developed over time to be, you know, a really nice community, I think, of working-class folks that really represented the culture of Sioux City back in, I would say, the '60s, '70s, and '80s, when we were really a lot more cohesive as a community.
Mark Munger: Yeah, and it's, you know, single-family homes.
Jeff Peterson: Right.
Mark Munger: Yards. Old trees.
Jeff Peterson: You can't get these trees on the east side. I mean, they're starting to get there in Morningside, but these trees are, yeah, are long-term maples and locusts and birch and just some beautiful, beautiful trees over here.
Mark Munger: Yeah. So, you know, could you describe what happened? And I mean, you are basically a witness to this. I mean, you are a witness.
Jeff Peterson: Yeah. This happened in front of us, unfortunately, and it was a long time in the making.
Mark Munger: Standing in the driveway. Trains and dogs in the distance. We looked directly across the street at a nondescript single-family home. This is where it gets difficult. Late in September 2026, the husband of a family came home. I can't report on his state of mind that day, but what happened is public record. He shot his mother-in-law. He shot his wife Amanda, and then he went outside and shot himself. Before this day, the neighbors knew this man to be violent, a fact that makes this story even more difficult and frustrating.
Jeff Peterson: And so many times, unfortunately, law enforcement had been called to the home because of domestic violence and arguments, and we knew that she needed help. She even said that, you know, "I fear for my life if I try to leave this person," even though he wouldn't get help. So she knew that that was her... What she needed to do next was to get out of the home because it was not a healthy situation for her or the children. And we were working with her to help with that. She was connected with a variety of social service agencies. She was trying to get this help, and we were not able to get the weapons in the home away from this individual.
And this is somebody who has significant moral injury, somebody who also likely had a substance abuse problem, and we talked about those three I's earlier, right? You have this intent, suicidal or homicidal intent, which is a brief, brief window. You have this reduction of inhibition through substance use, and then you have this impulsivity element that is the part that really creates that risk. And there's just these moments of impulsivity where somebody actually feels they can act on this, and so we knew this was a volatile situation. That if he didn't get help, if we didn't get her out of this home, that this could be catastrophic.
I guess we all felt that our hands were tied. There wasn't much more we could do. She put out a notice that was private because she didn't want him to know that she was trying to get out of the home, asking for money from friends. She was reaching out to relatives to try to get support for the children, and I just think it just didn't happen soon enough, and we weren't able to get the weapons away from him.
So it was a really horrible morning because we knew something bad was happening, and yet at the same time, it was like watching that disaster happen in slow motion, where you know it's going to happen, but you feel like there's nothing you can do about it. We knew something bad could happen, and then when it did, and it happened right here. This was the crime scene in my front yard. My front yard was cordoned off with crime scene tape. He came out to the front to say goodbye to us, basically, and killed himself in front of us. I mean, this is right here where it happened, and it was a very horrible, horrible scene. And we thought at the time that the kids were possibly involved in that, which, you know, just made us shudder. Right?
Mark Munger: So this is, I mean, that's the house, this white house.
Jeff Peterson: White house, and you see that awning on the right-hand side there, where there's a chunk of the siding missing.
Mark Munger: Yeah.
Jeff Peterson: That's from a bullet. Oh my God! It actually hit that corner of the house and ricocheted, and actually stripped off a piece of the siding after it went through him.
Mark Munger: Oh my God!
Jeff Peterson: It was a horrific scene that forever changed our lives.
Mark Munger: You were standing outside?
Jeff Peterson: We were here as it happened. We were looking out the window as it went down. We have our security system on as well, and saw the beginnings of it on that because we saw all of these SWAT officers coming through our yard and through the sides in the front. And just before that, the son had run out the garage to go get help and run to a neighbor, and yeah, so this whole thing happened at 8:16 in the morning on Saturday, September 26, and forever changed a lot of people's lives.
Mark Munger: This is where our conversation moves beyond the breaking news and into very challenging issues like gun violence. Dr. Peterson is an expert in his field of counseling. We rely on a number of things: Gun ownership is enshrined in the Constitution; studies show that most firearm homicides are committed by non-strangers; and on the hope that we can have constructive conversations.
The story, as we talked about earlier, that I'd like to tell is the impact of something like this on a community, on its neighborhood, and the things that happen to you and to the people around because of the violence that spreads out through the community because of this.
Jeff Peterson: I think that's the part we forget about. That for every victim of gun violence, for every person who's actually injured or killed, there is a wake of destruction behind them, of all the people that are connected to their lives. Right? This is like a boat wake in Okoboji when a Saturday, when you... Of all these boats out there, and it's choppy, and it's ridiculous, right?
You have this wake of destruction; these people's lives. For the three people that were killed across the street, there's 30 of us I can name whose lives are permanently changed, and I would even argue that that wake of destruction, cumulatively, is probably more impactful, as impactful, if not more impactful, than the actual deaths themselves, because of how the lives of these children are going to change, how our lives are going to change.
We're now looking at needing to leave the community because I have to look at the crime scene every morning. I come outside and sit on this bench, which used to be a place of joy and respite, and now it has incredibly deep impacted memories that make it really hard to feel comfortable in my own home. I mean, it's like having a home invasion or burglary, right? You start to feel kind of unsafe in your own home, and you can... People who have experienced that are really probably the only ones that can relate to that because for the rest of us, you know, you hear about these acts of violence, and then you can go back to your sanctuary, to your home. But when that act of violence occurs around your home or in front of your home, your home then becomes a part of that, and it becomes really difficult to feel safe.
Mark Munger: Yeah, it also changes everything in the past. I mean, you talk about all the memories of talking with her about her fears, but also the good things of working with her for the things like the Oktoberfest party. It's all now shaded by what's happened.
Jeff Peterson: I think, yes, it will permanently affect this wonderful thing that we had created, this event called Oktoberfest on Douglas, and I think the reality is because she was such an instrumental part of that event that that event just can't really occur in the same way that it would, and so in some ways it's kind of ended this momentum that we were trying to build as well in the community as far as connecting our neighbors, which is unfortunate because she was such a lively part of that. She was the beer maid. She was the person who greeted everyone as they came up. And of course, the most popular, right? The beer maids are always the most popular.
Mark Munger: You talk about conversations you had, so she'd clearly opened up to you and other people in the community about the problems, and you attempted to try to find solutions or to provide safety for her and her family.
Jeff Peterson: Exactly. In fact, when we were debriefing from all of this with law enforcement and the investigators on this, and I was talking more about, you know, of course, our survival guilt comes out. This idea of what could I have done differently? What could we have done? Could we have done more?
And that's why I say the system failed us because I believe that so many of us were doing so much. And I'm a professional that works in clinical mental health. I know how to get people connected to the resources they need. I can see the telltale signs of people that need help, and if somebody like me, who's trying to get help for somebody, struggles to get this help, then I can only imagine how hard it would be for somebody else.
And so this has been really impactful because of that. We just really struggle with what could we have done, and could we have done something more. Like I said, law enforcement had been multiple times to their house. The system had been activated. It was on everyone's radar that this person was heavily armed, and yet because our guns are constitutionally codified as a right, it's different than other situations. You can remove other dangerous elements from society, but when it comes to guns, we have created this kind of quagmire that's going to require a little bit more sophisticated approach.
Mark Munger: Yeah, I think that's really a difficult part of this issue. Is that, you know, we're protected in having that gun. But how do we talk about it then? If, I mean, it seems that the issue to a lot of people is closed. That this person has the constitutional right to a gun, and that's case closed. But yet, you know, when somebody with these sorts of concerns or issues has a gun and is a very real threat to their family, what do we do?
Jeff Peterson: Yeah. This situation is like a cancer in society, and believe it or not, it's not the guns that are the cancer. Because you'll hear a lot of folks that are pro-gun will say, "Wait a minute, the guns don't kill people; people kill people." And actually, I believe that because there are many forms of weapons: bombs, poison, all these other things, right, that could kill somebody, and it really is the violence that is the cancer, the violence that's the cancer.
Now, unfortunately, guns are an incredibly efficient means in which to enact violence, probably one of the most efficient. And so, this is where the quagmire lies. Right, we have to look at this from a bipartisan standpoint. The PBS NewsHour last week had a great story talking about this that said there are two strategies that can be incredibly effective. The first one is safe, secure placement of a firearm. Right, making sure that we're able to educate, and I think in some ways maybe consider a law that mandates safe storage. The second part of that story talked about these red flag laws, which our wonderful neighbor to the north, Minnesota, has in place, or some of the municipalities and the communities have in place [1]. But unfortunately, Iowa has been so resistant towards. But these red flag laws at least can help set a... give us a set of criteria, both behaviors and actions and thoughts. Right.
So if I express certain thoughts or if I act in a certain way, and I'm otherwise a law-abiding citizen, right? I don't have necessarily this other record that would then sustain removing weapons or firearms. That you also have some teeth here to temporarily remove access to the means, and we know this from our suicide and homicide research. That these moments when somebody actually has an active intent to either kill themselves or kill somebody else, these moments are short little windows, and part of the strategy for suicidality, to work with folks when we try to create a safer environment, is to remove access to the means, because that can make them safer. Because if there's more obstruction in the way, it can help them get through these little crisis moments, these little windows when that intention is high, the inhibitions are low, and the impulsivity is high, because those are the three I's that are very dangerous and make a very volatile situation.
These red flag laws help us get through those little windows of both suicidal and homicidal risk. And if you can have those in place and have, I would argue, mandated clinical mental health treatment as a way to get your weapons back, just like we do with DUIs, right? With drug and alcohol, we have mandated counseling, and that allows you to get your license back, or allows you to get some of these other things back.
Now, from a legal standpoint, this is really tricky, right? Because driving is a privilege, guns are a constitutional right, and that's why we're having troubles with this. But if we could figure out a way to get through those troubles, and work out a red flag law that makes sense, we could see a dramatic impact in the reduction of violence. Because crimes of passion are the number one source of a lot of gun violence [2]. In other words, it's not always premeditated. It's these little windows of moments where people make bad decisions because they're not able to make good decisions, they're not in that part of their brain that allows them to make good decisions, and so if we can do these things to just make those moments a little safer, and then get these folks the treatment that they need, that's how we can really at least take a bite out of the impact of this larger cancer that I'm talking about.
Mark Munger: I think we need to have conversations like this in our culture because there is a problem. But I think one of the problems of the problem is that we think of the reason to have guns is because a stranger is going to walk into your house. When I do talk to other people about, you know, why do you have guns in your house? "Well, somebody's going to break in. Somebody's going to threaten my family, and I'm going to protect them." Yeah, but for the most part, the case that happened here is the case that happens everywhere with gun violence. It is, you know, a known person in your community, in your neighborhood, in your household. It's not somebody who broke down the door. It's somebody who walked through with a key. How do we then make that the center of the conversation, right? Like you're doing now.
Jeff Peterson: This is where I was mentioning to you earlier the importance. I think, and I wish NPR and both PBS and NPR would maybe do a little more than just the reporting. I wish they would go back to embracing the science, and share with their listeners and their viewers some of the science that can support some of the positions.
And we can do this again from a bipartisan standpoint. I don't think we have to have a particular angle on this. I think if you look at the science, we know that, like you said, we live in a town of, what, 80,000 folks here in the Sioux City area, and these types of crimes, gun violence, period, just is very rare here. The likelihood of you encountering an active shooter situation in your lifetime is very, very rare. But that's not the problem.
Here's where the problem is, and this is what the science has shown us. Mark, imagine if you suspected that your partner, the person you trusted the most in your life, was betraying you in some way, but you had no proof of that. You had no tangible evidence, but the suspicion then drove you to go into this mode of constantly evaluating and spying and trying to solve this or figure this out. What we've learned in relationships, for example, is that folks that get into that spiral, it just becomes a death spiral. Even if the individual's partner is completely innocent, the reality is it creates this spiral of suspicion that then makes them ultimately paranoid, and that implodes on itself, and actually can become the factor that then destroys the relationship or harms the individual.
In the same way, guns. When you have this sense, and we call... There's two factors here. There's that paranoia around that that occurs when we start to get into this kind of, "I feel this threat," right? This fight, flight, or freeze part of our brain. Remember, we're getting away from our executive functioning, that part that has this rationalization, and we're perceiving that there's these bigger threats around us. And sometimes by even carrying the firearm, that creates this bigger perception. In fact, you'll talk to law enforcement officers who choose not to carry off duty, and it's because they don't want that responsibility, right?
So then you add that to drugs and alcohol. Well, what's one of the most popular things in our society is drinking or, in this case, maybe marijuana, and we oftentimes think, well, marijuana helps us mellow out and you're going to be less violent, but the reality is any time we're altered it's going to contribute to this potential paranoia. It's going to contribute to this sense of, like you said, this sense of needing to preserve or protect.
So, here's the deal. People are coming in with good intentions. These are usually protectors. People who carry concealed are people that want to protect their families. They want to protect themselves, and I think we should acknowledge that and say this is a good intention. You want to keep our community safe, but the reality, the pragmatic reality behind that, is where we get into this trick, and it's the psychology behind that that I start to get into this kind of trap that can then start to bring me down.
Mark Munger: This is a Manager's Special from Siouxland Public Media. I'm Mark Munger. Dr. Jeff Peterson is talking to me outside his home on the north side of Sioux City. He witnessed the gun deaths of his neighbors in late September 2026. I wanted to understand what this terrible moment left in its wake.
Bringing it back to this neighborhood. I mean, how does the group of people that have also suffered this violence, how do they continue on? I mean, what is the way forward?
Jeff Peterson: That's a good question. I mean, I'm probably $2,000 into mental health counseling over the past month between myself, my partner. We have gone to do EMDR. We've gone to debriefing. We've also been very fortunate to have some friends who've done some pro bono work with our community, who've come in and worked with some of the neighbors.
The reality is, this is an expense. It's a toll on all of us, not only financial but emotional. I average three to four hours of sleep now because I don't feel safe in my home. I feel deeply saddened that this beautiful, beautiful family, their life was hastened as a result of this, and that these systems have failed. I feel less confident and safe in the systems, right?
I mean, a lot of us take respite in these systems, right? That, "Oh, we have law enforcement, we have these policies in place." And now I realize that, wait a minute, there's some major gaps, there's some major problems with the system that really need addressing, and the longer we put that off, I mean, the more wake of destruction, as I talk about, is going to come into play.
So our community right now is fractured, and I think we are deeply saddened. And I think we realize that life on Douglas Street and this part of Douglas Street will not be the same for a while.
Mark Munger: How do we get to conversations that can be conducive? And I think, you know, especially when they're issues that are politically charged, you know, how do we move out of the forum of that political debate and to the place where we can discuss it in ways that are effective, that matter, that are, I guess, trusting of each other? That we all can see that this is something tragic and painful?
Jeff Peterson: Yeah.
Mark Munger: And we can all agree that something needs to be done about it? There's not necessarily culpability. Like, you know, philosophical culpability for those who believe one way or another, but there's an agreement that something bad happened and we need to improve it?
Jeff Peterson: I teach multiculturalism for future counselors, and Emmanuel Acho has a segment, podcast, called "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man." Race relations, right? I mean, that's another one on our list, right? That it's really tough to talk about those things.
Gun violence. It's really tough to talk about those things because, yeah, we are divided with that, and I think it starts by finding some common ground. I don't think we can remain in our staunch kind of polarized viewpoints. We have to appreciate and understand why guns are a part of our history. They were actually, you know, intended to be a check and balance in our culture, in our society, and it has now become infused in our culture and society. And I don't think we can get away from that by just saying get rid of the guns. I wish we could, personally, but that's my political position. I think the reality is, if we can find a way to mitigate, like that cancer I talked about, if we can mitigate and reduce the harm, and we can find ways to find a safer balance of firearms in our society, that's going to be key.
Mark Munger: Dr. Jeff Peterson is a licensed clinical professional counselor. He talked with me from his home.
If you are a victim of domestic violence, you can get help by texting START to 88788.
[1] Editor’s note: Minnesota’s statewide red flag law took effect January 1, 2024. It allows certain people to petition a court for an Extreme Risk Protection Order temporarily prohibiting someone from purchasing or possessing firearms when they pose a significant danger to others or a significant risk of suicide.
Read the Minnesota Judicial Branch’s explanation.
[2] Editor’s note: A 2014 study published in the American Journal of Public Health and available through NIH’s PubMed Central found that roughly 78% of U.S. firearm homicides involved offenders known to their victims, based on data from 1981–2010. This finding concerns firearm homicides, rather than all gun violence, and does not establish that the killings were “crimes of passion” or unplanned.
[2] Editor’s note: University of Chicago Crime Lab director Jens Ludwig argues that most shootings arise from arguments that escalate rather than advance planning or economic motives. In a May 2025 interview, he states: “Most shootings are crimes of passion, not profit,” emphasizing rage’s role in these encounters.
Read or listen to Ludwig’s interview on the University of Chicago’s Big Brains podcast.
For related data, see the FBI’s 2019 Table 10: Murder Circumstances by Relationship and Table 11: Murder Circumstances by Weapon. These tables document circumstances such as arguments but do not directly measure premeditation.
