Team 26, the cyclists who stopped in Morristown on Sunday from Newtown, CT, arrived in Washington DC on Tuesday to press for universal background checks for gun sales.
The bikers represent each of the children and educators who were murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School by a 20-year-old gunman in December 2012.
Team 26 also visited Morristown last March en route to the nation’s capital. As you can see in this video, which includes comments by the daughter of a Sandy Hook victim as well as Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty and Council President Rebecca Feldman, the rally co-organizer, the cyclists are determined to keep riding until more “sensible” gun laws are enacted.
In addition to background checks for all gun owners, they want a federal law to prohibit gun trafficking, bans on assault weapons and more stringent regulation of gun ownership for people with mental illness.
It was heartening to see a large crowd representing a wide age span at this welcome of Team 26 on Sunday at Morristown’s Town Hall. It was saddening to remember the tragedy of lives taken at Sandy Hook and then to see how many more gun deaths have occurred in our country since then. In the words from the song from the sixties, “When will we ever learn?”