{"id":97736,"date":"2023-11-14T12:16:30","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T18:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=97736"},"modified":"2023-11-14T12:16:30","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T18:16:30","slug":"97736","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=97736","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Comment O’ The Day:
\nIt\u2019s a good way to start something they can\u2019t win.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\u2018Nationwide gun emergency\u2019 discussed by U.S. House Democrats at roundtable meeting<\/a><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. House Democrats held a Monday roundtable forum on changing U.S. gun laws following a recent mass shooting in\u00a0Maine, where 18 people were killed.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, invited witnesses to discuss gun violence solutions, and said that the gun industry lobby, the National Rifle Association and Republicans push back against gun reform.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to examine the nationwide gun emergency that\u2019s taking place, the endless rounds of gun violence and massacres that are plaguing our society,\u201d Raskin said.<\/p>\n

Some of those witnesses included gun safety advocates, educators, survivors of gun violence and people who seek to intervene in community violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a light at the end of the tunnel with this issue,\u201d Democratic Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida said. \u201cThe gun lobby is more afraid, now more than ever, as they see a multiracial, multigenerational army of Americans who are not willing to relent from the demand for common sense gun reform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats on the committee who participated in the forum included Reps. Greg Casar of Texas, Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia and Dan Goldman of New York.<\/p>\n

Democrats said they opted to organize the roundtable after being turned down in their request for a formal hearing to Republicans who control the chamber. \u201cWe could not convince the majority to have a hearing about the state of the nation with respect to gun violence,\u201d Raskin said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Following the mass shooting in Maine, GOP House Speaker\u00a0Mike Johnson<\/strong>\u00a0of Louisiana pushed back on Democrats\u2019 call for gun control measures and argued the appropriate response was prayer.<\/p>\n

For years Democrats have tried to pass gun safety legislation. While the House has been able to do so, the Senate requires a 60-vote threshold and Democrats hold a razor-thin majority in the upper chamber.<\/p>\n

Safer communities act<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, Congress\u00a0passed the most comprehensive federal gun safety legislation<\/a>\u00a0in nearly 30 years, known as the\u00a0Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.<\/a><\/p>\n

In September,\u00a0the White House announced the formation of an Office of Gun Violence Prevention<\/a>\u00a0to help state and local governments implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.<\/p>\n

This year alone, there have been 602 mass shootings,\u00a0according to the Gun Violence Archive<\/a>\u00a0that tracks shootings in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Kelly Sampson, senior counsel and director of racial justice at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that research there has found that a majority of Americans support universal background checks on guns.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite what the gun lobby tries to make people think, gun violence prevention laws are widely popular,\u201d Sampson said. \u201cWhat we really need to do is continue to keep the pace of talking about what it looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"U.S.<\/a>
<\/i>\u00a0U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, second from left, leads a roundtable discussion on issues of gun violence, in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Nov. 13, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Democrats from the House Oversight Committee organized the event. Also pictured, from left, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-Washington, D.C., Mariah Cooley, board member of March for Our Lives, Joseph Blocher, Duke University law professor, and James Timpson, managing director of community violence initiatives at Roca Inc. (Drew Angerer\/Getty Images)\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Community intervention<\/h4>\n

James Timpson, who works with Community Violence Initiatives in Baltimore, Maryland, said that federal funding for gun violence needs to stretch over a longer period of time, and that funding that lasts six months or a year isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

Timpson works with many young people and uses cognitive behavioral therapy, strategies to change thinking and behavior patterns. He said, realistically, \u201cIt takes at least 18 to 24 months before we start seeing sustained behavior change in young people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo disrupt violence, we must heal trauma, the trauma our young people experience\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mariah Cooley, a 22-year-old graduate of Howard University, said that there needs to be a holistic approach to addressing community gun violence, such as adequate school funding, access to grocery stores and jobs that pay a livable wage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people don\u2019t have access to those basic needs, then they result in crime,\u201d Cooley of Illinois said.<\/p>\n

Cooley is a board member of March for Our Lives, a youth-led organization that advocates for gun control legislation at the state and federal level.<\/p>\n

She first experienced gun violence at 13, when a peer was killed, and again at 16, when her cousin was killed due to gun violence.<\/p>\n

A school principal\u2019s view<\/h4>\n

Michelle Kefford, the principal at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, said that because school shootings are so common, educators have come together to create a guide on how to deal with the aftermath of gun violence at schools.<\/p>\n

Kefford became the principal of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after the mass shooting on Valentine\u2019s Day in 2018, when 17 students and teachers were killed.<\/p>\n

Firearm-related injuries are now the\u00a0leading cause of death<\/a>\u00a0for children and adolescents in the United States, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.<\/p>\n

Kefford said she is a member of the Principal Recovery Network, where 21 current and former principals reach out to schools that suffer a school shooting and help find best practices for recovery. Members include the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six teachers were killed.<\/p>\n

She said last year, there were hundreds of incidents of gunfire on school grounds.<\/p>\n

According to the K-12 school shooting database<\/a>, there were 305 incidences of shootings at schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is an average of a school shooting every other day,\u201d Kefford said. \u201cThere\u2019s so many shootings that there is simply not enough federal recovery funding and resources to go around for all of those shot in schools.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comment O’ The Day: It\u2019s a good way to start something they can\u2019t win. \u2018Nationwide gun emergency\u2019 discussed by U.S. House Democrats at roundtable meeting WASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. House Democrats held a Monday roundtable forum on changing U.S. gun laws following a recent mass shooting in\u00a0Maine, where 18 people were killed.\u00a0 The top Democrat on … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97737,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97736\/revisions\/97737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}