Advocates, victim families call for gun control

NORRISTOWN >> Dozens of people wearing shades of orange blanketed the Montgomery County Courthouse steps Thursday. The building itself will be cloaked in the color after sunset.

“Let it be a symbol for those who drive by and walk by and stop, to pause for a moment and reflect on those lives lost, reflect on those families who were impacted and dedicate themselves, most importantly to ridding our communities, ridding our Commonwealth and ridding our country of gun violence,” Commissioners’ Chairman Josh Shapiro said of the orange lights that are set to shine on the courthouse.

The colorful show is in support of National Gun Violence Awareness Day, started in Chicago by friends of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed by a gunshot in January 2013.

CeaseFirePA advocates, elected officials and two people who had lost family members to gun violence gathered on the steps to speak about the thousands killed each year by guns.

“In no other nation do we lose 33,000 people a year to gun violence,” said state Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-153rd Dist. “What if we realized that we were losing a jetliner of people in America, including children, every single day? Would we not do something about that?”

Dean supports legislation that aims to enforce universal background checks, increase the reporting of lost or stolen firearms and create temporary firearm restraining orders for those who are believed to be a threat to themselves or others. Movita Johnson-Harrell, whose son was shot and killed in a case of mistaken identity in 2011, spoke passionately about the topic. She said it was not about taking guns away, that she herself is licensed to carry.

“This is not about taking people’s second amendment rights. This is about our human right, our constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she said.

Johnson-Harrell said she moved out of Philadelphia because she was afraid that her children would fall prey to the gun violence in their neighborhood. Despite her efforts, her son Charles was shot and killed at the age of 18, as he was picking up his sister, she said.

“Three years to the day after we left, I put my son in the ground,” Johnson-Harrell said. “So what I tell people is you cannot move away from this problem.”

Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said she was there both as an elected official and as a physician, to say that communities can work together to reduce the risks of homicides, suicides and mass shootings.

“I speak with you from my heart as a doctor,” Arkoosh said. “As an anesthesiologist who has spent countless nights in the operating room doing my best to keep victims of gun violence alive long enough for the surgeons to try to fix the damage.

“I also speak to you today as your county commissioner, as a person who heeded the call to public service out of the enormous frustration that I felt in my medical practice with my inability to keep each of those patients out of the operating room in the first place.”

Arkoosh listed statistics of those killed by guns in Montgomery County. During the last three years, she said, 28 county residents were murdered by guns, while another 115 committed suicide using guns. Firearms were used in 151 robberies and 71 assaults since 2015.