I have just completed reading the book “Glimmer of Hope”, the account of the March For Our Lives which had an estimated 800,000 peaceful participants in March 2018, after the mass shooting of students at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The classmates of the dead students expressed their resolve to confront the issue of gun violence.
With two mass shootings in our country in the last week, this book takes on added significance. The students who put the march together offered a list of commonsense reforms to reduce gun violence.
These reforms include instituting universal background checks, banning high capacity magazines followed by a buyback program of guns already owned (President Bush allowed the ban on assault weapons to expire), disarming domestic abusers, instituting a risk protection order to prevent a person at risk from getting a gun, passing federal laws specifically targeting gun trafficking, funding gun violence research for the CDC as a public health issue and eliminating restrictions which prevent the ATF from digitizing records of gun sales.
These are not outrageous suggestions. A majority of citizens support such laws. It is up to us to let our senators and representative know that these are important issues to us.
Of course enacting such laws will not stop all gun violence. But I dare say, it will help.
Marilyn Garrett
Auburn, Alabama
