About 150 people packed into the Heidelberg Volunteer Fire Hall Saturday, many wearing stickers, pins and T-shirts bearing messages that included “Gun safety voter” and “Moms Demand Action.”
They were there for a panel discussion sponsored by Giffords and VoteVets. The local stop was part of a nationwide tour to support veterans running for Congress on the promise of responsible gun laws.
The 12-person panel was, almost to a person a gun owner, and four are veterans, including current U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, retired NASA astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly -- who founded Giffords with his wife, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords -- and the moderator, Dan Helmer, vice chairman of VoteVets.
Ms. Giffords, who was not at the Heidelberg event, was shot in the head by a gunman while campaigning near Tucson, Ariz., in 2011. The attack killed “six of her constituents and injured 12 others in 15 seconds,” said Mr. Kelly, a Navy combat veteran.
A year later, when 20 children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, Mr. Kelly and Ms. Giffords left public life to “try to move this country in a safer and more responsible direction,” he said. “Last year, 36,000 people died in gun violence and 110,000 were shot and injured. We are like no other country on the planet. If more guns were the solution, we’d be the safest country in the world.”
The Giffords & VoteVets Veterans Tour is part of Giffords larger #VoteCourage campaign to elect gun reform candidates nationwide. Giffords and partner organizations have raised $1.5 million to register 50,000 young Americans to vote.
Mr. Lamb, a Marine veteran and a Democrat who is running against Republican Keith Rothfus in the new 17th District, told the crowd that the 113th Congress won’t act on “even the most common sense things, things most anyone would consider uncontroversial. It will go down in history as being one of the most unproductive.”
He said Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ proposal that teachers be trained to use guns in school with funds meant for student enrichment requires citizens who believe in “common sense reform” to counter that idea.
“Massive amounts of money” pours into campaign coffers from the gun lobby to both Republicans and Democrats, Mr. Lamb said. “I have seen the gridlock that people back home talk about metaphorically.”
One panelist, a teacher named Craig Wells from Upper St. Clair, said inaction on gun policy is a weight on educators by “taking value away from children, who need to be learning [school subjects], not how to barricade themselves.”
“I served for many years in the military,” said Mr. Helmer, an Army veteran, “and I lost a friend to gun violence in Iraq in 2004. I was devastated, but I took solace in the fact that we had signed up for this.”
But this is civilian society, he said, “and thanks to all the people out here who are saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ We can have responsible gun laws in this country” without threatening the right to bear arms.
Brian Ratica, a gun owner and sportsman, told the crowd that he had to take a 12-hour safety course for hunting and believes in background checks on all gun sales. He said he comes from a pro-gun community that largely doesn’t agree with him.
“Have you ever convinced anybody?” Mr. Kelly asked him.
“Yeah, my dad, with my child sitting in front of me.”
Jenny Partica of Moon said she was in high school when the Colombine High School shooting in 1999 riveted the nation, as it was one of the early mass shootings in a school.
“My high school [in central Pennsylvania] was different the next day, with new rules and drills,” she said. When her 3-year-old reported how safe his nursery school was, she said she couldn’t reassure herself of the same feelings.
Two retired teachers in the audience have become activists for responsible gun laws and they attended the event together.
Chris Urich, of Ross, said she has been “to all the marches, signed the petitions, made calls and donating to causes, including to an organization of Parkland High School Students in Florida who are working to get their peers to register and vote.
Angela Stasik, of Canonsburg, retired from teaching high school 11 years ago and said she cannot imagine being armed in a classroom. “That is too much responsibility for someone who is trying to teach. If you could just teach, it would be great.”
Diana Nelson Jones: djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. Twitter@dnelsonjones.
First Published: September 9, 2018, 12:41 a.m.
