EVENT DRAWS DOZENS
Wide range of views are aired during forum at Kingston Library
KINGSTON, N.Y. » A broad range of opinions were expressed Tuesday about how firearms might be regulated in response to growing concerns about gun violence.
About 70 persons attended the event at Kingston Library, organized by Democratic congressional candidate Pat Ryan, who said there was a need to have conversations between people who hold diametrically opposing viewpoints.
“My particular angle on what’s happening in our country with an epidemic of gun violence ... is as the son of a teacher,” he said. “My mom ... spent her whole life doing what I think is the most noble form of public service, teaching in our public schools right here in Kingston. Thinking about her and so many other educators and teachers now having to ... multiple times a month, put their students into closets or turn out the lights or have their children hide under desks, that is just wrong.”
Ryan said his perspective is informed by 27 months he spent in service in Iraq and carrying an assault rifle during active duty in the U.S. Army.
“People my age have been living with these backwards laws our whole life and we see our peers getting shot up in school.” — Panelist Eli Duncan-Gilmour, a New Paltz High School senior
“I cannot get the image out of my mind in the (Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.) incident (of a) 19-year-old young man taking that weapon and carrying it into a school,” he said.
While school shootings and the response of lawmakers dominated the discussion, speakers ranged further into gun violence policy issues.
“People-of-color led organizations have been calling for gun control since the Black Panthers,” said panelist Omiroro Renee Oni-Eseleh, a volunteer for Community Voices Heard Power and the Adelante Student Voices
groups.
Oni-Eseleh said the example of Chicago gun violence is used by racists as a “dog whistle” to blame blacks, rather than be seen as an example of how the “disenfranchising of people of color in their own community” can result in gun violence.
“When you red line people and tell them they can’t move to certain areas because white people are scared, that’s a problem,” she said. “When you ... take educational opportunities away from children and close their schools, that’s a problem.”
Panelist Eli Duncan-Gilmour, a New Paltz High School senior, told the audience that students have become politically active because current elected leadership has not been effective in making educational campuses safe.
“In the Sixties, there ... was a whole range of things that were just not right and it got to a point where people couldn’t deal with it anymore,” he said. “People my age have been living with these backwards laws our whole life and we see our peers getting shot up in school . ... We’re good at calling BS and the sleeping giant is getting woken up.”
Duncan-Gilmour said that, among the obvious things the U.S. Congress has done to keep weapon manufacturers happy was to block research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of gun violence.
Several audience members said political change has been blocked by National Rifle Association election contributions and that members
of the organization appear unwilling to work toward a solution.
Laurel Lindewall recalled a conversation with someone she characterized as a responsible gun owner.
“He wouldn’t harm anyone with his gun, but he gets constant information from the NRA obviously,” she said. “There was no way that he would even give an inch on assault weapons,” Lindewall said. “He would say right back to me, ‘Oh, that’s not an assault weapon,’ and you could tell it was just stuff he got from the NRA.”
A few people who were opposed to new firearms regulations also spoke, including certified firearms instructor James Meineker, who focused on telling audience members they were misinformed about the consumer
weapons identified as assault rifles.
“There’s so many myths here that you’ve presented that just aren’t true,” he said.
Meineker said that, in 2016, there were only five murders committed with rifles in New York state and only two of those with an assault rifle.
“If you want to go after something, why aren’t we going after pistols?” he asked. “Firing away, killing more people.”
Meineker said the government includes too many “politically motivated” branches, which he identified as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service.
New Paltz High School senior Matthew Gose closed the session by telling the audience
that even some understanding adults are too far removed from their classroom days to have a grasp on students’ concerns. He said two gun ownership advocates at the meeting were examples of how difficult it is for students to believe that the current political leadership will make people feel safe in schools.
“The two men back here, some people, it just seems like they don’t even want to listen,” he said. “They expressed their feelings and this is suppose to a discussion, but they walked out when the panel went to give them their responses.”
Gose added that, to the “kids, this is affecting, and the kids being killed, they can’t express their voices and I just think that’s kind of ridiculous.”