San Mateo residents, leaders seek action on gun violence

“We have to recognize that tragedies with the gun, often that person has a history of domestic violence. If we want to fight one, we need to fight the other,” CORA Executive Director Karen Ferguson said of the July 14 march.

CORA sees clients from all backgrounds, faiths and walks of life and found calls during COVID saw an escalation of lethality. Recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; and Highland Park, Illinois; have given more urgency to an already desperate situation. Ferguson said CORA workers offer direct services throughout the area and often see guns used on the front lines of domestic violence, with the entwinement leading to the march.

“The staff said this intersection of how guns affect our world and how that plays out in this shooting and in shootings more directly connected with domestic violence is extremely important to us,” Ferguson said.

CORA organized the march to highlight the cross between gun violence and domestic violence, noting that 56% of women murdered by an intimate partner from 2010 to 2019 occurred with a gun, while the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increase the risk of homicide by 500%. Among industrialized nations, 92% of women killed with guns are from the United States, and firearms increase the risk of multiple victims in domestic homicides. In the United States, around 70 women each month are shot and killed by an intimate partner.

Ferguson asked policymakers at all levels to make a difference visible at the direct family level, noting while San Mateo County had more robust policies than other areas, the protection of families can always go further.

San Mateo Deputy Mayor Diane Papan spoke at the march and called on citizens to press the government at all levels for action. Work has begun at the state level, with Assembly Bill 2571 signed earlier in the month, prohibiting the marketing of guns to kids. Gov. Gavin Newsom also recently signed legislation allowing the state, local governments and citizens to sue gun makers.

“Enough is enough. We have to take this to Washington,” Papan said.

San Mateo Councilmember Amourence Lee noted current work is not enough and called on marchers to make their voices heard to keep the government accountable. As a member of Moms Demand Action, which fights for public safety measures to stop gun violence, she rallied marchers to City Hall to advocate for safer gun storage, resulting in the city passing a Safe Gun Storage Ordinance.

“We have a long march. Much longer than City Hall,” Lee said to marchers at the rally. “We have to get all the way to Sacramento. We have to get all the way to Washington, D.C.”

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, who spoke at the rally, called guns a bane of the country, with the United States suffering from more gun-related deaths than other industrialized countries. He noted domestic violence involving a gun happens everywhere, with San Mateo County not immune. He cited a July 7 apparent murder-suicide at a South San Francisco home between a man and a woman following a domestic dispute that now leaves a child without his parents.

“What everybody is saying here tonight is so important,” Wagstaffe said, “not so we can stop it elsewhere, but we want to stop it right here.”

curtis@smdailyjournal.com

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