WASHINGTON— On Thursday, the Chair of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) held a press conference on legislative gun violence prevention efforts. Thompson and Jeffries met with other state representatives, members of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, a trauma surgeon and gun violence survivors.
“Every day, 30 people are killed by someone using a gun. If you add into that suicides and accidental deaths, that number jumps up to over 100 people a day. Gun violence costs the American people $280 billion a year on top of the lost lives, the broken families and all the other victims,” said Thompson.
“The notion that in the country that prides itself on freedom and liberty, people have to have high anxiety about going to school, worshiping in a church, a mosque, a synagogue or a house of worship, making a simple, innocent mistake,” Jeffries said.
“Over the coming weeks, my friends and colleagues here in the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force will continue to appeal to our colleagues across the aisle one-on-one in hopes of turning empty thoughts and prayers into meaningful action and policy. This is an epidemic of our own making. We have the power to stop it. The solutions aren’t complicated,” added Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-KY).
Dr. Jason Smith, University of Louisville Health Chief Medical Officer and Trauma Surgeon, recalled that every community is going to be impacted by gun violence: “I pray and hope it is not yours. But the simple statistics will tell you it will be, and you will know someone. I don’t know the solutions. I’m a doctor. My job is to put bodies back together after these tragedies. I can’t heal the scars of the community. I can’t heal the spirit that is broken when this happens, and I cannot bring back the losses that we suffer. But I can pray and ask all of you, no matter what side of this issue you are on, to step forward and begin to dialogue, to talk about this. We will go nowhere if we can’t begin to have an honest communication about what is going on in this country regarding gun violence.”
Rep. John Larson (D-CT) was present at the event bringing together the Mothers United Against Violence group, represented by Deborah Davis. “We all need your support. We are losing so many young people across the country. We know what the pain is. We are represented by mothers throughout the state of Connecticut that understand how to help others get through that pain. We have also an excellent model of how to work with our police department. We want them to hear our voices. We are willing to talk to them. We want to share our voices with them and let them know how important it is to save lives. That’s our underlying goal: saving lives. If we can start to save a life, that’s what we want to do. This should be a bipartisan issue, because it is taking out everyone across the board. It doesn’t matter what color or ethnicity you are, what language you speak. We have to be there for each other. We are exhausted of seeing shootings across this country for no reason whatsoever,” said Davis.
“It’s possible that it’s this generation of parents that will save our children. Whether you’re a republican or democrat and independent, you have no interest in politics whatsoever. But you’re a parent,” said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH), endorsed by Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI). “I come to you today as a mother, a lawmaker and a freedom loving American who is ready to be free from the oppression of the gun violence epidemic – number one killer of children. We are the only country that has this issue and, what’s worse, it is entirely preventable through pragmatic legislation that does not infringe on our Second Amendment rights. I want to claim the freedom and promises of our beautiful country for our children, which is why it’s all the more tragic that mass shootings are a uniquely American problem. While other comparable countries have had one or two school shootings per decade, between 2008 and 2018, the United States had 288. That’s 57 times more than other industrialized nations combined. Just this year, we have watched at least 160 mass shootings at birthday parties, in classrooms and colleges,” she added.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) then related a whole series of personal experiences in shooting events throughout 47 years of life, some with no consequences, but others with fatal ones. “At that point, I said to myself: something has to happen. There has to be a national day of warning, or something I wasn’t even thinking about, passing gun legislation, gun reform legislation,” he said.
“We’ve got to make sure that we build on that grassroots movement and move it in the right direction, so we can finally protect our children, turn this around and get our peace back in the streets,” Rep. Glen Ivey (D-MD) said.
