Read more: 6 Real Ways We Can Reduce Gun Violence in America “When you add the easy access to firearms, that’s when you have this grinding daily gun violence.” “In inner-city communities, you often see high levels of poverty a lack of economic opportunity for people who have been systematically disenfranchised by the criminal justice system,” says Josh Horwitz, Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. In the last month, at least nine children have been killed across the city. And as of July 24, Chicago has had 414 murders this year and 1,637 shooting incidents, up from 275 murders and 1,110 shooting incidents year-on-year. Philadelphia has seen a 33% increase in shooting incidents this year, with more than 990 people shot. New York City has had over 800 shooting victims in 2020, compared to 481 in the same period last year. Since Memorial Day - the day Floyd was killed - more than 113 people have been shot in Minneapolis. “We should have a handle on this by now.” We’ve been pressing the snooze button on this issue for too long and we’re at the point where we can’t press it anymore,” Pastor Price says. Buoyed by the groundswell of support for some high-profile victims of police violence, and for larger societal reforms, they say now is the time for action. Pastor Price and community activists in cities across America that are currently facing high levels of gun violence say the issue has been ignored - and stigmatized - for too long. “He had to have dribbled his little basketball right past my church,” Price says. The park from where Tyshawn was lured by his assailants is also down the street. The Pastor’s church was across the street from the grammar school that Tyshawn attended, he tells TIME. Pastor Price began his outreach work after the 2015 death of Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old who was killed in a targeted shooting that drew national attention to gun violence in Chicago. And they will apparently use anything they can think of to excuse it - including a genocide 25 years ago and 7,000 miles away.Burris did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment. Republicans like Pearce are twisting themselves into knots to explain why they won’t support tightening gun laws. But that would be a ridiculous explanation nonetheless for the deadly increase in mass murders since Republicans allowed the assault weapons ban to expire in 2004. Incidentally, Pearce is flat wrong about a supposed “breakdown” of the American family. Rick Santorum, Pearce declared that there’s been a “complete breakdown in the values of our country” which is “coming straight from a breakdown in the family.” In the radio interview, Pearce also blamed societal ills for the constant parade of mass shootings in the U.S.Įchoing former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Instead, he wants people to be allowed to carry concealed weapons around school campuses. Yet Pearce doesn’t support laws to keep military-style rifles out of the hands of these “evil” people. Pearce declared that he thinks there’s “evil that is coming loose now” and “stuff percolating in people’s hearts.” And it takes callous advantage of a horrific episode in history to try to justify his own dismissal of the gun violence crisis. because the Rwandan genocide was carried out without guns is ludicrous. Pearce’s suggestion that new gun laws won’t make a difference in the U.S. The government sponsored the 100-day genocide, and the perpetrators did indeed use machetes. In 1994, members of the Hutu majority government oversaw a genocidal mass slaughter of nearly one million people in Rwanda. This new attempt to deflect responsibility for stopping gun violence is not only strange - it’s despicable. They killed a million people with machetes because of the evil in the hearts of people.” “Gun control itself is not going to be the answer,” Pearce said regarding the school massacre in Parkland, Florida, that claimed 17 lives. Specifically, he insisted that passing gun safety laws won’t stop school massacres because “evil” people can still use machetes. In a radio interview, Pearce attempted to draw a line from the mass genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and gun violence in America today. But New Mexico representative and gubernatorial candidate Steve Pearce offered the most bizarre excuse yet for opposing gun control. Republican lawmakers have by and large stubbornly refused to take action on gun safety.
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