Wearing orange for gun violence awareness

Politicians, activist groups and others head to Eisenhower Park to promote change

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Orange is worn because that is the color that hunters wear to stay safe, Laura Burns from the group Moms Demand Action said. Other groups like Moms Demand Action who fight for gun safety in America such as Life After Loss ANDRE, local politicians, and attendees all wore orange on June 3 for National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

The Wear Orange event in Eisenhower Park on June 3 brought people together all over Long Island to promote common sense gun legislation and gun safety in the country.

The original event was started in 2013 by a group of teenagers who were honoring their friend Hadiya Pendleton who was shot in the back by two men at a park in Chicago. “It’s grown to be a nation-wide event,” Burns said. “Coalition of gun violence prevention groups plan events all weekend long and it’s to bring attention to our epidemic of gun violence that kills 110 people everyday in America, injures hundreds more and traumatizes thousands more than that.”

Burns, who’s involved with Long Island’s chapter of Moms Demand Action, said that Moms Demand Action is the nation’s largest gun violence prevention organization. They were founded in response to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. She said she got involved because her daughter Natasha was the same age as the kids in Sandy Hook who died.

“I watched that day as it happened,” Burns said. From Rockville Centre, she is a writer that was working for herself from home when it happened. “I was online all day and I could see the news getting worse and worse and I was not an activist of any sort but I knew that if anything should ever happen to my daughter I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself because now we’ve seen that it can happen.”

Janet Goldstein, an East Meadow resident, got involved with Moms Demand Action because “thoughts and prayers were doing nothing.” Now, she’s the public education leader of the Long Island organization.

“I could no longer sit helplessly watching our young children die,” Goldstein wrote to the Herald. “I felt that I had the chance to make a difference.”

Now, she spends her time educating the public with presentations talking about safe gun storage and gun ownership. “When your child goes on a playdate, gets babysat, goes to a pool party and anywhere else, you typically ask about food allergies and pets but nobody ever thinks to ask about firearms in the homes that they are visiting,” she wrote. “Our presentation helps people to understand the importance of, and process of, asking about these things.”

Tents and speakers were there for people to peruse and listen to. Attendees said that places like movie theaters, schools and places to shop should not be areas where people are targeted. They should be safe havens.

Some people who attended were survivors of gun violence. Others were those who lost family and friends to gun violence, such as Stephanie Draine, founder of Life After Loss ANDRE.

“There are too many guns on our streets, in our communities, taking lives,” Draine, who started her organization with her husband to raise awareness and help others after her 26 year old son was killed in 2014, said. “Some of the conversation may be a little painful but everything that we’re going through now is painful. So the truth has to come out and as we know sometimes the truth hurts.”

National Gun Violence Awareness Day comes only a week and two days after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas where 21 people were killed, including children.

“Thoughts and prayers don’t work anymore,” State Senator Kevin Thomas, a Democrat, said. “We took action last night. I was on the floor debating for two hours on a bill that is so common sense and we ended up passing that bill as well as nine other bills for common sense gun safety here in the state of New York.”