It was a long day of statistics and storytelling at the State House on Sept. 13, as hundreds gathered in Gardner Auditorium to give and hear testimony on proposed changes to the state's gun laws.
Sixty-some gun reform bills are before the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, and this was the fifth and final hearing in a road show of hearings the committee held across the state over the summer months.
"Episcopalians have attended these legislative hearings all summer in force, from Barnstable to Springfield, because we are committed to making our communities safe for all people," the Rev. Timothy Crellin, Vicar of St. Stephen's Church in Boston, told the committee.
He delivered testimony on behalf of Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE, who attended the morning session but had to leave before his panel was eventually called at around 1:30 p.m.
Ellen Stuart
Bishop Tom Shaw spoke to the press prior to the Sept. 13 gun legislation reform hearing.
"Last September, gun violence struck at the heart of our diocesan community when 19-year-old Jorge Fuentes was murdered while walking his dog in the early evening outside his home in Dorchester," Crellin said of the young leader who was known by many Episcopalians through their involvement with him in the church's B-SAFE summer youth program.
"We continue to tell Jorge's story, share our pain and ask for meaningful reform. And we will keep asking, because we are in this for the long haul," Crellin said. "We are asking in particular for stronger penalties for gun trafficking to keep guns from flowing into our community. Burying Jorge Fuentes, I can tell you, personally was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Please do your part to prevent these tragedies," he said.
The Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, a recently formed umbrella group of about 30 entities (including the Jorge Fuentes Antiviolence Task Force of the Diocese of Massachusetts), organized a contingent of religious leaders and gun reform supporters to testify at the hearing.
Massachusetts already has some of the strongest gun laws in the country and the second lowest firearm fatality rate, organizer Angus McQuilken said at a pre-hearing briefing, demonstrating that "strong, effective gun laws work." It's also been at least 15 years since Massachusetts' gun laws have been reviewed, he said, and "it's time to identify and fill the gaps" by enacting "meaningful, reasonable proposals under the Second Amendment that protect public safety."
The coalition supports universal background checks and a strengthened background check system; a suitability standard for all gun licenses; maintaining prohibitions on high capacity ammunition magazines and stronger prohibitions on military-style assualt weapons; and measures to address illegal gun trafficking--which the coalition cites as the primary source of crime guns in Massachusetts--including penalties for failure to report lost and stolen guns.
Throughout the course of the hearing, parents, clergy, activists, gun owners, veterans and youth came before the committee, but it heard first from fellow legislators and high profile reform proponents--including Governor Deval Patrick, Boston's mayor, Thomas Menino, Newton's mayor, Setti Warren, and Suffolk County's district attorney, Daniel Conley.
Ellen Stuart
The Rev. Timothy Crellin (far left) testified as part of a clergy panel.
Perhaps the most moving testimony of the morning session came from Nicole Hockley and Mark Barden, both parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook school shootings in Newtown, Conn., last December.
"If the price of inaction is one more child's death, shouldn't we act now?" Hockley said. "Don't wait until our tragedy becomes your tragedy," she said.
Governor Patrick, whose own bill seeks, among other things, to bring Massachusetts into compliance with the National Instant Criminal Background Check system and would limit individuals to one gun purchase a month, said to sustained applause, "It's not about taking away anybody's rights. It is about affirming everyone's right to live in safety and without fear of violence."
But the same laws that gun control advocates spoke of as effective or in need of strengthening were characterized by gun ownership supporters as "convoluted," "an abject failure" and punitive to law-abiding gun owners.
They spoke against prohibiting specific types of guns and ammunition and in support of measures like more timely license processing, tax incentives for those who purchase gun safes and locks, safety training and early intervention.
The varying points of view underscored the complexity of the task at hand as the committee tries to balance public safety needs with gun ownership rights in any bill it reports out for a vote, perhaps as early as this fall.
Mayor Menino alluded to a place of common ground when he said the debate should focus on crime control, not gun control. "Too many lives continue to be lost to gun violence," he said, adding, "Our neighbors need action today."
That was largely the message of the religious leaders who testified, too.
"We care about the lives of all our children, and we care about the welfare of the Commonwealth," Jeremy Burton, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said.
The Rev. Laura Everett, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, made an impassioned plea, describing the numerous ways that churches are seeking to end violence. "The churches in Springfield train youth in peaceful conflict resolution. The churches in New Bedford ride in police cars. The churches in Arlington run a gun buy-back program," she said. "Do what we cannot do with all of our programs, all of our education, all our funeral homilies: enact meaningful, comprehensive gun reform legislation."
--Tracy J. Sukraw, with Ellen Stuart contributing