During my position as an Intern for the Mayor of West Chester, Mayor Carolyn Comitta has shared her cause of creating safer gun control laws with me. Mayor Comitta is involved at different levels of the community, state, and nation. Many students who have interacted with the Mayor before know her commitment to the community and the university. On a national level, the Mayor is a member of Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns, (M.A.I.G). M.A.I.G is a bi-partisan coalition of over 900 mayors in the United States working towards protecting their communities by having safer gun laws.
Soon after the shootings in Sandy Hook Elementary School, as intern to the mayor, I attended a Demand for Action meeting in Washington D.C., sponsored by M.A.I.G. The meeting started in the morning with speakers from families of victims and other political speakers to prep the Mayors on how to discuss practical measures that can be undertaken to help prevent more senseless shootings to congressional members of their states. M.A.I.G has practical and common sense agendas that make them hard to refuse.
During the Demand for Action meeting on Capital Hill, there were three main points on which M.A.I.G was focusing. The first is requiring background checks for gun purchases. The second is getting high capacity rifles and ammunition magazines off our streets. And the third is making gun trafficking a Federal crime. The Mayors met with their congressional senators and congressman. During our meeting with Congressman Jim Gerlach from Pennsylvania, we were advised this was the first practical view they had heard. M.A.I.G is not a radical group, its sole purpose is to use common sense to improve safety of our citizens. M.A.I.G is not against guns, only illegal ones, as the website says: “We support the Second Amendment and the rights of citizens to own guns. We recognize that the vast majority of gun dealers and gun owners carefully follow the law. And we know that a policy that is appropriate for a small town in one region of the country is not necessarily appropriate for a big city in another region of the country.”
Usually after a shooting there is an uprising and demand for change, then there is a reduction of attention. It is important that this time we do not let a die down happen. There have been too many shootings and too many innocent deaths to ignore this program and think it will go away. We need to follow the footsteps of M.A.I.G to try to repair the problems of illegal guns and to not let the victims of the shootings die in vain. Helping end gun violence can be easier than you think. Here is what you can do: spread the word on twitter using hashtag #demandaction. Visit M.A.I.G’s page, www.demandaction.org, on this website you can sign their petition, email congress, and call your own senator. Though you may think these small actions are insignificant, you could be preventing the deaths of thousands, and helping the recovery of the families of victims.
Alyssa Strasser is a fourth-year student majoring in international affairs. She can be reached at AS745673@wcupa.edu.