Protesters call for action to end gun violence in USA
SWARTHMORE >> People from all walks of life and different faiths converged at the Swarthmore Friends Meeting House Sunday afternoon with a unified message to stop gun violence.
This latest event in the county to decry intentional fatal usage of firearms gathered about 100 people who want sensible gun reform, this after 11 people were killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27 as an alleged antiSemitic hate crime.
Ralph Ciampa of the interfaith group Heeding God’s Call - Delaware County said it’s time for a change in the country to prevent such public mass shootings from continuing to happen.
“We need to stand up to protest those risks that still remain in our community and that could be changed,” he said to the crowd outside the meeting house. “We’re glad to have you here to add to our voices in our communities that say things need to change.”
Heeding God’s Call organized Sunday’s event and featured speakers from different faiths and religious affiliations including Jewish, Muslim and Baptist. Community members who have been directly affected by gun violence and those working with organizations to bring about change in firearm availability also spoke.
No matter the message, Heeding Executive Director Brian Miller said spiritual leaders who speak out against violent massacres always miss one point: To be active.
“Things are not going to change until we all get active,” said Miller. “I’m happy to say that you are being active by being here today. That’s where we intend at Heeding God’s Call and we will continue to call on people like you… to get active and stay active about this issue, and that’s how we’re going to bring change.”
Jessica Frankl from Delco United for Sensible Gun Policy said families get disrupted when gun violence takes the life of a loved one. She said there have been times where she can’t contain her anger and sadness with each new shooting that happens in the United States, the country with the highest gun fatality rate in the world.
“Rather than finding the solution to help stop the carnage, we hear calls from our leaders to put guns in schools and in churches,” she said. “None of us want to live in a world where there is an armed guard on every corner, and we all know that more guns are not the answer; What do we do?”
A first step lauded by Frankl was Gov. Tom Wolf on Oct. 12 signing a law which requires a convicted domestic abuser to relinquish their firearms to a law enforcement agency or authorized gun dealer within 48 hours. The previous time frame was 60 days and allowed the firearms to be stored at a friend or family member’s residence.
This bill was approved with all representatives and senators serving Delaware
“Things are not going to change until we all get active. I’m happy to say that you are being active by being here today. That’s where we intend at Heeding God’s Call and we will continue to call on people like you… to get active and stay active about this issue, and that’s how we’re going to bring change.”
— Heeding Executive Director Brian Miller
County voting to approve it.
Getting that bill signed into law was declared the first piece of sensible gun legislation signed into law in Pennsylvania by Frankl, “and it was no small feat” to get it through.
“It took everyday people like you picking up your phones, writing your legislators, showing up in Harrisburg … all of that to get our legislators to call for a vote and make the right decision,” she said. “We did more than hope and pray, as Brian said, we took action and it worked.”
Rabbi Nathan Martin of the Congregation Beth Israel of Media said after the experiences the country endured over the past week his heart breaks at the killings in Pittsburgh and two African Americans shot in a Kentucky supermarket in another alleged hate crime.
“When you save a life, it is as if you’re saving a world,” said Martin. “When you take a life, it is as if you are destroying the world. The killings this week were part of a larger string of killings by gun violence that we face in our country everyday (that) have up-ended lives and destroyed worlds.”
After a number of speeches at the Swarthmore Friends Meeting House there was a remembrance walk down to the Trinity Episcopal Church in the borough. Around the church building property at the corner of College Avenue and North Chester Road was a slew of T-shirts serving as a marker for lives lost to gun violence in the county. This Memorial of the Lost is a mobile way to put a visual element to the number of lives lost to gun violence. Each shirt has the name and age of a person who had succumbed to a bullet.
At Trinity, people received voting guides that listed the gun rights positions of state and federal lawmaker candidates in Tuesday’s election and participated in a letterwriting campaign to their legislators to ask for more participation in “common-sense” gun legislation.