Electeds Snub Student Gun Forum

Really, morons? You're sacrificing decades of future voters, who will not forget this snub, in order to pander to the old racists who probably aren't enough to get you over the finish line this year anyway.

From the Herald:

For a group of Lexington high school students too young to cast ballots, desire for change led to a forum Wednesday night organized with the hope of bridging the political divide to discuss possible solutions to what they called a “gun epidemic.”

“We saw this issue as being an issue important to us, and many of us aren’t old enough to vote,” said McKayla Weaver, one of the student organizers. “So we saw this as an opportunity to still participate in the legislative process.”

To that end, the students invited more than 20 politicians at the local, state and federal levels to serve on a panel Wednesday night at The Lyric Theatre. Of those invited, four accepted. Some didn't respond.

Among the no-shows were Lexington state Reps. Robert J. Benvenuti and Susan Westrom along with U.S. Reps. Andy Barr, Thomas Massie, Harold Rogers and John Yarmuth. More than 100 communities members came out to ask questions and hear the panel members' positions on gun-related issues.

State Sen. Reggie Thomas, state Reps. Kelly Flood and Ruth Ann Palumbo, and congressional candidate Chuck Eddy fielded questions from activists, students and families of gun violence victims. Thomas, Flood and Palumbo are Democrats, while Eddy describes himself as a moderate Republican. Thomas and Eddy are running for Barr's 6th Congressional District seat.

The four were largely in agreement on the general need for gun regulations, but they voiced different ideas and plans to implement them. Other options discussed included a waiting period for gun purchases, getting military style weapons off the street, curbing gun theft and mental health treatment.

As the only Republican on the panel, Eddy mentioned several times that people trying to start discussions on gun regulations should stress that they don’t want to take guns from people who already legally own them.

SNIP

Thomas said gun regulations and solutions to gun violence would not come overnight. Changes would require an extreme amount of funding and work by activists and politicians.

Expanding research on the causes and effects of gun violence would play a key role in learning how to fix the problem, Flood said.

Several in the crowd had experienced the effects of gun violence first hand.

Anita Franklin, whose 21-year-old son Antonio Franklin was killed in April 2014, was among the family members of gun violence victims who spoke Wednesday night.

“Since that day of that tragedy, me, my family and my city have decided we’re going to turn his death into a triumph,” Anita Franklin said. She went on to say that while focus is on mass shootings in places like Parkland, Fla., people cannot forget the toll local violence has taken on places like Lexington.