February 6, 2019
Page 13
O PINION
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Moving Forward to Prevent Gun Violence
We make
progress by
never giving up
m arian w right e Delman
When
26-year-
old Stockton, Ca-
lif. councilmember
Michael Tubbs was
elected in 2016 as
Stockton’s first black
mayor, its youngest
mayor ever, and the
youngest mayor in U.S. history of
a city with a population of at least
100,000, he had a mission to make
positive change in his hometown.
Last year the city made prog-
ress towards a key goal: reducing
gun violence. Stockton police re-
ported 40 percent fewer homi-
cides and 31 percent fewer shoot-
ings between 2017 and 2018 and
said increased police resources
and community involvement are
making a difference.
Mayor Tubbs shared his thanks
in a social media post: “The mur-
der of my cousin is what brought
me back to Stockton after college
and I’ve spent the last six years
as an elected official focused on
reducing shootings and homi-
cides and making our community
safer…I want to thank Stockton
Police Department, the Office of
by
Violence Prevention and commu-
nity partners like Friends Outside,
Fathers & Families of San Joaquin
and Advance Peace for the amaz-
ing work they did in 2018.” He
added: “Let’s continue in 2019.”
Stockton isn’t the only place
making progress on gun vi-
olence. Across our nation,
state leaders have respond-
ed to our children’s cries
and advanced common
sense gun violence preven-
tion measures to keep them
safe. Last year more than
half of all states passed at least one
gun violence prevention measure:
Eleven states enacted laws to
keep guns out of the hands of
those convicted of domestic abuse;
nine states banned bump stocks or
strengthened existing bans; eight
states and D.C. enacted extreme
risk protection order laws which
empower families and law enforce-
ment officers to temporarily limit
gun access for those who pose a
danger to themselves or others; and
seven states added new background
check requirements or strength-
ened existing requirements. In
total, 20 states and D.C. currently
extend background checks beyond
federal requirements.
The majority of these laws
were enacted in the months after
the Parkland shooting—a testa-
ment to the courageous children
and youths who organized and de-
manded leaders protect children,
not guns.
There have also been signs of
positive progress at the feder-
al level. The Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explo-
sives issued a ban on bump stocks
which will take effect on March
26 and remove these dangerous
devices which can be attached
to semiautomatic rifles to mimic
machine guns. Bump stocks were
used by the gunman who killed 58
people at a Las Vegas country mu-
sic concert in 2017. The ban pro-
hibits future sales of bump stocks
and requires current bump stock
owners to destroy the devices or
turn them in.
The midterm elections ushered
a “gun sense” majority into Con-
gress and established gun violence
prevention as a national moral im-
perative and top legislative prior-
ity. Most notably, on Jan. 8 Con-
gress introduced the bipartisan
Background Checks Act which
would require universal back-
ground checks for all gun sales,
not just sales by licensed gun
dealers, which is what current law
requires. In the most recent Quin-
nipiac University poll, 92 percent
of American voters supported
these checks. This bill is a critical
step towards keeping guns out of
the hands of those who would use
them to harm our children. While
background checks don’t prevent
legal gun purchases, they could
prevent child and teen gun deaths.
In 2017, 3,410 children and
teens were killed with a gun. How
many more senseless child and
teen deaths will we allow before
we enact common sense gun safe-
ty measures?
While we are encouraged by
these modest first steps, the fact
that more preschoolers were killed
by guns in 2017 than law enforce-
ment officers in the line of duty re-
inforces that this is still an urgent
crisis and we still have a long way
to go.
Every 2 hours and 48 minutes
we fail to act, a child or teen is
killed with a gun. We cannot afford
to wait—our children’s lives are at
stake. We must continue making
progress and never give up. All of
us must stand up and demand our
elected officials pass the Back-
ground Checks Act with urgency
and act to keep the momentum go-
ing. Every child and every person
should be able to walk our nation’s
streets without fear. With the anni-
versary of the tragedy in Parkland
only a few weeks away let’s show
our children they can finally count
on us to protect them not guns.
Marian Wright Edelman is
founder and president emerita of
the Children’s Defense Fund.
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