Friday morning’s blazing heat couldn’t stop area activists from pressing their campaign against blazing guns.
“I’m tired of turning on the news and hearing about the latest mass shooting,” said Rosie Kitson, affixing an orange ribbon to a light pole on South Street.
The retired Morristown resident joined fellow members of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, who fanned out downtown with ribbons marking National Gun Violence Awareness Day and “Wear Orange Weekend.”
The color–worn by hunters as protection from other hunters–honors the memory of Hadiya Pendleton. One week after marching in President Obama’s 2013 inaugural parade, she was shot on a Chicago playground. She was 15 years old.
More than 120 Americans die from gun violence every day, according to the Moms group, which is pushing for universal background checks for gun purchases and restoration of a federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.
“I’ve been having lockdown drills since I was a little kid. It’s been forever terrifying to me–what if this was an active shooter?” said Samina Aziz, a junior from Edison’s Wardlaw Hartridge High School.
She came to the Morristown event with classmate Shachee Kumar. Young Americans must keep demanding commonsense gun laws, they contend.
“People have the power to change this. But no changes are happening,” Kumar said.
Tiffany Starr of Denville tries hard not to get discouraged. She was among Friday’s speakers in front of town hall. For six years she has been re-telling, and re-living, the story of her father’s 1994 murder in upstate New York.
Her dad, a sixth-grade teacher, died fighting off Starr’s sister’s ex-boyfriend, a stalker who shot the locks off the family home and came inside.
The scuffle — and the attacker’s pause to reload his hunting rifle –bought time for the family to escape.
If the killer had been toting an assault weapon, “there is no way my mom and sister would be alive,” said Starr, now 43. Her orange t-shirt proclaimed: “I AM A SURVIVOR.”
She does not buy arguments from the gun lobby that the solution to gun violence is arming everyone. Her father was a hunter with a rifle in the closet. But he instinctively ran to his daughter when he heard her scream.
“It’s unrealistic to think you will be of a mind to get your weapon and use it effectively” in such situations, Starr said.
She said it used to take days for her to recover from the emotional trauma of revisiting her personal tragedy at rallies like this one. Encouragement from people inspired by her story has kept her going.
“Progress takes time…we have to keep letting officials know that many more of us believe in gun safety and gun sensibility than don’t,” Starr said.
“As long as I’m living, I’m going to keep trying to keep this from happening to other people.”
Ah, more theater from naive folks who mean well, bless their hearts…