I went to the March For Our Lives in Seattle on Saturday. Here’s a few of the messages that I heard and saw:
A man, walking in arm with a woman, held a sign that read, ‘I never want to get another “We’re on lockdown” text from my wife again.’
A child carrying, ‘I don’t feel safe,’ another, ‘vote them out.’
A woman with a cane standing on the side of the street with a sign that read ‘respect for free’ saying loudly to the passersby: “Know you’re strong! Know you’re wonderful!”
A couple carrying a small child each, one of them also holding a sign, “NOT ONE MORE”.
An older woman with a sign ‘This is killing us’.
A pair of guys; ‘Guns are stupid’ and ‘The kids are all right’.
Two elementary-school aged boys, vigorously yelling “VOTE THEM OUT”.
Several signs held by US war veterans – men and women – promoting tighter gun controls.
A sign in the distance: ‘Australia fixed this, so will we’.
Girl with sign ‘2020 voter’. A younger boy, sleeping on his father’s hip, sign tacked to his back ‘I vote in 9 years’.
Several ‘I’m marching in memoriam’ signs.
Woman with sign; ‘Students, thank you for your strength. We got your backs’.
Chant: “Hey Hey Hey Hey, NRA; how many kids have you killed today?”
No one should die from gun violence in this country.
Now I’m going to get back to outing the gun manufacturers whose merchandise is designed and made to kill people.
This incident, #34 for the year on the Gun Violence Archive, is the first shootout I’ve come across. The Archive helpfully points out that a shootout is “where VENN diagram of shooters and victims overlap.” Maurice Delaney, 38, and Ali Mohamed, 31, killed one another around 4:25am on New Years Day 2017 in Chicago at a North Side Uptown neighborhood business. I found multiple sources to say that both guns disappeared from the crime scene before officers could take them in as evidence. DP 1 and 2
An 18-year-old teen was killed in a brawl that spilled out into the car park of the 508 Nightclub in Des Moines, Iowa. Frederico Thompson Jr, a father to a young girl, died around 3:30am at the scene. An article from 9th of January, 2017, remarks that there is no suspect named in the case, but the bar has had its liquor license suspended.
Another article in the Des Moines Register from the 1st of January, 2018, writes that police detectives claim to know who the killer is, but do not have the witnesses statements or photographs to back it up. There’s no information about the gun either. DP 1.
Nineteen-year-old college student Christian Dawson died in Azure Banquet Hall, in Dallas, Tx, from what was reported to be a stray bullet. Several other people were shot, but none had life-threatening injuries. One year later the killing was still reported to be unsolved by the Dallas Police Department. No gun known. DP 2
* * * T R I G G E R W A R N I N G * * *
Incident number 37 on the first of January involved Marissa Hope Reynoso (26), Elijah Chavez (4), Ezra Chavez (1) and Jorge Luis Chavez (25). Jorge Chavez and Reynoso had broken off their 5 year relationship in the preceding months, and members of the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department had responded to two other calls from Reynoso about Chavez in that time. The gun was reported as a 9mm hand gun that had been previously reported stolen, some years before. Reynoso is survived by another daughter from a different relationship.
I have drawn a lot of 9mm weapons so far; the two Default Pistols are both 9mm, and so was the Glock 17 drawn for the Chicago police, and a Sig Sauer P226 and P229, also used by me to represent guns fired by police. So I’ve decided to add a new one, to the, uh… arsenal. The Glock 19 has been mentioned before round these parts, is famed for being a lightweight version of the 17, and is apparently a very popular gun. In that post I wrote that it was one of the guns that would likely get featured round here, so I guess it’s about that time.
