“I just spent time with some local high school students, hearing their pleas for action on common sense gun laws, and marking moments of silence for each of the 21 people killed in Texas. Nineteen young children were killed in their classroom. I cannot imagine the horror and pain their families are going through right now, though as a mom, I can feel in my gut the depths of trauma that they will forever feel.
On my son’s 9th birthday, shortly after learning that children younger than him had been violently killed at Sandy Hook, I walked into Longfellow School to celebrate his birthday and hear his class sing Christmas songs; I remember vividly the sense of horror I felt imagining the same happening there, at that moment. Yesterday as we prepared for his graduation party, I learned that this had happened again. In the intervening decade we’ve owed their parents – and our kids – significant action, common sense gun laws. Yet as my child and his peers graduate from high school, still nothing has been done. The list of victims to whom we owe action continues to grow.
If anyone can take comfort in my prayers, know that I am offering them. But these parents in Uvalde, and every community in this country, are owed action. The vast majority of Boiseans and Americans want reform that would encourage responsible gun ownership and keep weapons of war out of the hands of people who would walk into an elementary school and murder almost two dozen children.
We can do it. We must do it.
It’s time to pay our debt to help keep our children safe.”
- Boise Mayor Lauren McLean