Gun Violence Prevention
I was on campus the day my university was attacked by a gunman. I talk about this experience openly and often. You may hear this and think you easily understand why I am an advocate for gun violence prevention. However, December 6th doesn’t even scratch the surface of what gun violence means to me or people my age.
I am the oldest of four children in my family. What if I told you two of my siblings experienced a hard lockdown because a student was suspected of bringing a gun to campus and making threats? What if I told you that happened less than 9 months before the UNLV mass shooting? This means that a majority of the kids in my family have feared for their lives while at school. It means that before my own SWAT evacuation, my brother had a rifle pointed at him while authorities searched for an assailant at his school.
The personal connections continue. One of my best friends from high school went to the University of Virginia after graduation. She lost someone in a devastating shooting just a year before I lived through my own. Then there’s Christopher, my classmate at UNLV. Chris and I lived in the same residence hall, and he worked at the McDonald’s on the corner of campus. He would warmly greet me in the drive-thru as I would pay for a coffee before class. Chris was killed along with his mother, grandmother, and two friends in his North Las Vegas apartment building just six months after our campus was attacked.
The degrees of separation for Gen- Z and gun violence is shockingly low. We are the school shooting generation. We have watched our whole lives as the violence has astronomically grown and our leaders did little to stop it. The urgency I feel doesn’t come from living through a mass shooting; it comes from the fact that my school’s attack wasn’t even the only mass-casualty shooting that week! A group of 5 homeless individuals were shot on Dec 2nd, four days later UNLV was attacked, and five days after that (Dec 11th) a family, including two children, were slain in a murder-suicide in Northwest Vegas. UNLV itself couldn’t last more than a few months before gun violence returned to the campus. Days after classes ended in May, a man was shot in the Gateway building parking garage. Then, in July, a man was arrested for concealing a firearm on his person near the financial aid office. Incidents continued throughout the summer and the rest of 2024, like when CCSD confiscated 9 guns in the first month of school. The threat of gun violence will continue to loom over our community until we take decisive action.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, Nevada has a rate of gun violence higher than the national average (17.7 gun deaths per 100k residents compared 13) and ranks 19th in terms of gun safety policy for the country. It’s time to stop being middle-of-the-pack and become a leader on this issue. To be clear, I am not anti-gun. As long as the second amendment exists, we have a right to bear arms. We may not always agree on the best way forward, but we cannot stop trying to address this crisis. If Nevada, home to the most fatal mass shooting in American history, cannot have this conversation? Who will?
Testifying to the Assembly on SB 156, the Gun Safety Act
I helped lead a diverse coaltion of students, survivors, and organizations to advocate for this bill, and I’m ready to do it again.
Policy Priorities:
Create a State Office for the Prevention of Gun Violence - This office would be a centralized hub for a state response to the gun violence epidemic. Through tracking and researching incidents of gun violence, managing grant programs for locally-run initiatives, and creating educational safety campaigns, this office can lead our state’s effort to save lives.
End the Charleston Loophole - This is the loophole that allowed the Charleston shooter to legally purchase the weapons he used to attack a church. It allows a firearm purchase to proceed after 3 business days, even if the background check is incomplete. Our Republican neighbor, Utah, closed this loophole, and so can we!
Require new handguns sold in the state to have microstamping technology - Microstamping allows law enforcement who recover ballistics at the scene of a shooting to immediately identify the gun used to commit the crime.
Ban Individuals Convicted of Hate Crimes from Purchasing Firearms - Several of our worst recorded shootings are hate-based. We need to do our part to prevent more harm.
From the 83rd Legislative Session →SB 89: This bill, sponsored by Senator Pazina, would have prohibited people convicted of hate crimes from purchasing firearms. This bill passed but was vetoed by Governor Lombardo.
From the 83rd Legislative Session →AB 105: This bill, sponsored by assembly member Jauregui, would have banned firearms within 100 ft of an election site, helping to prevent armed voter intimidation. This bill passed but was vetoed by Governor Lombardo.
