Topics in This Issue:

- Wear Orange Day
- Humanizing Homelessness
- Refugees
- Tucson Greyhound Park Closing
- PFAS Update
- City Worker Clinic
- Pima Council on Aging (PCOA)
- ByFusion Blocks
- Ben’s Bells in Blenman Elm
- Parks and Recreation Events
- COVID

Wear Orange Day

This is County Supervisor Rex Scott, along with Pam Simon and Pat Maisch in the background over my shoulder. Rex had just addressed Saturday’s Wear Orange event with a county proclamation related to gun control. I’m shown also presenting a similar statement from the city. Statements and proclamations are expressions of support. At this point though we simply need action from the federal and state governments – or as I said during the event – have them get out of the way and we’ll handle it on the local level.

When I got home Saturday night after the event, I found that the lead story on the local news was another shooting incident. In Phoenix 1 person was killed and 8 others wounded in a ‘party that went bad.’ Here’s a short list of places that now have a history of things ‘going bad.’

Congress has been gutless, and the leadership of the Arizona state legislature is bought and paid for by the gun lobby. Otherwise, we’d have seen actual changes in laws. And to the true believers who say changes in laws would do no good, simply put, that’s not true.

Banning the sale of assault style guns to citizens would have prevented hundreds of deaths. Simple. Military-style weapons should only be used in military operations. Sales to civilians should be banned.

Safe storage laws may have prevented murders in Irving, Texas (5), Sacramento (5), Red Lake, Minnesota (9), Omaha (8), Santa Monica (4), Newtown (27), Marysville, Washington (4), and Roseburg, Oregon (9). In each of those cases the gun used in the shooting was stolen.

Banning the sale of extended magazine sales would have prevented deaths in Tucson (6), Santa Monica (5), San Bernardino (14), Kalamazoo (6), Orlando (47), Aurora (12), Las Vegas (58), Sutherland Springs, Texas (25), and Killeen, Texas (13).

Requiring background checks on all sales – including private sales at gun shows – would have prevented deaths in Odessa, Texas (7), Carson City, Nevada (4), Meridian, Mississippi (6), and Atlanta (12).

Increasing the legal age limit for the purchase of all weapons to 21 would have saved lives in Parkland (17), Indianapolis (8), Buffalo (10), and Uvalde (21).

None of that impacts the ability of adults to legally purchase a weapon. And understand also that the deaths reflected in those incidents do not count the hundreds of people who were shot, injured but not killed. Many of them are living with diminished capacity physically, and all are living with the post-traumatic stress that will never go away.

Safe storage laws, age increases, background checks and banning extended magazines. Watch in the coming days to see if any of that is done, or if all we get from congress is a commitment to more thoughts and prayers WHEN the next mass shooting incident takes place and one of these simple measures can be cited as a causal factor.

There’s an election coming this November. Do your homework.

Click Here to view the City Of Tucson Steve K's Newsletter - June 6, 2022