Students support Cow Palace gun show ban

In the last few months, we have seen both the horrible effects of gun violence affecting our communities, in schools especially, and the momentous upswell of activism by students fighting to end that violence. In the Bay Area, students have organized to lobby state and local lawmakers to enact sensible gun control, and to lead the nation in common-sense gun reforms.

More than 10,000 people are killed with a gun every year. As a high school student, I have become used to hearing about yet another school shooting on the news, to wondering how likely it is that my school will suffer one of these senseless attacks. This did not start with Parkland, it did not start with Columbine: This has been going on for decades. We have become inured to it.

This is all the more reason to say no to the normalization of gun violence in our society and work to free ourselves from the complacency that comes with the acceptance of our toxic gun culture. In the Bay Area, we already understand that to stop gun violence, we need to remove the threat of the guns themselves from the equation.

San Francisco no longer has any gun shops. Student activists picket the gun shows at the Cow Palace, protesting and talking to attendees about why we need to stop these shows, and how they pose an affront to our community’s values and our dignity as a civilized society.

What makes these gun shows even more offensive is that, since they are held on state land, California, through the Cow Palace Board of Directors, is actively profiting from the sale of firearms, while the communities immediately surrounding the Cow Palace — Bayview/Hunter’s Point, Visitacion Valley, the Mission — suffer from gun violence.

As students, we do not want these gun shows to take place in our community because, simply put, there are too many guns in our society. That is why we stand by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who has authored Senate Bill 221 in the California Legislature, to use the state’s authority to ban gun shows at the Cow Palace. As Sen. Wiener puts it, “our country is awash in guns;” the state needs to bring its management of the Cow Palace into line with the values of the communities that surround it. That means banning gun shows there.

Students have been protesting and marching all over the country against gun violence and, here in the Bay Area, students are also pushing for change in our own communities. There is support in the state Legislature for stricter gun control: while Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed bills to ban gun shows at the Cow Palace before, in the face of unanimous support for the ban from the governments of San Francisco, Daly City and San Mateo County, we are now spotlighting this issue as students, and as the future of this state and country.

Sen. Wiener’s bill, SB 221, heard in the Assembly Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, June 19, is now making its way to the Assembly Appropriations Committee. We were at the committee hearing in support, to make sure that our voice is heard — to show our communities we are standing up for what we believe in, and that we will not back down — and we will continue to testify in committee and push for gun control as long as our friends and our communities are under attack. This is but one step, but is a step in the right direction, and we students will be making sure it is not the last.

Calvin Quick is the legislative coordinator for Bay Area Student Activists (BAStA), created in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting to unite students on issues that concern them. He is a junior at the Lycée Français de San Francisco.