End the Killing
Edwina Grant works in the After School Program at Project HOME’s Honickman Learning Center Comcast Technology Labs.
March 1, 2006 was the worst day I ever had in my life. On that day my 19-year-old son Samir was shot and killed on our block by a 15-year-old neighbor boy, for no reason. No family should ever have to go through what my family had to go through. My husband died a year later, partly because he couldn’t bear the terrible grief. Also, no family should ever have to go through what the other family is going through – they’ve been affected, too, knowing the terrible crime their child committed.
People don’t understand the devastation that is caused when someone picks up a gun and uses it to kill. I believe people have the right to protect their families, and guns in the right hands can be OK. But I know a fifteen-year-old shouldn’t be running around a neighborhood with a handgun. We’re supposed to be a civilized country. My neighborhood is full of guns, just like neighborhoods across the city and state – and I know for sure there aren’t deer hunters or gun collectors in my neighborhood. That’s why I am grateful to Lynne Honickman for starting Moms Against Guns. This viral campaign has given me and others a way to organize against illegal guns. We need your help.
Right now, Project HOME is partnering with Moms Against Guns and CeaseFire PA to collect signatures on a letter to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett. The letter urges the Governor to support laws that keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people, and to increase affordable and supportive housing to help end homelessness. In memory of Samir and other victims who have died, I am asking you to go to the online letter and sign it – and encourage friends and colleagues to do the same. Together, we can build a stronger grassroots movement to end gun violence in our communities across the state. Just the other night in my neighborhood, another young boy was shot in the head. Two more families were destroyed. We’ve got to do all we can to stop this horror. You can make a difference. To sign the letter, click here.
