Audrea Hickman’s son Jarrin was murdered on April 17, 2020.
She shared her story during a rally as part of the Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action Annual Advocacy Day at the Ohio Statehouse on Wednesday. About a hundred people donning red shirts gathered for a rally Wednesday morning at the Trinity Episcopal Church to kick off the day.
“The young men that he engaged were able to do what they did because they had access to illegal guns,” Hickman said. “That is what we want to stop. We want to take the guns out of the hands of the people that should not have them. … Gun violence is a domino effect that impacts everyone.”
Gun violence prevention bills
A handful of gun violence prevention bills have been introduced in the Ohio Statehouse this year —
- State Reps. Michele Grim, D-Toledo, and Munira Abdullahi, D-Columbus, introduced a bill that would prevent someone who has been charged with or convicted of a first-degree misdemeanor for domestic violence from possessing a firearm.
- State Reps. Richard Brown, D-Canal Winchester, and Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, put forth a bill that would repeal the state’s permitless concealed carry law and reinstate the law requiring someone to have a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public.
- State Reps. Phil Robinson, D-Solon, and Isaacsohn introduced a bill to mandate background checks for all firearms sales including private sales.
- State Reps. Darnell T. Brewer, D-Cleveland, Garfield Heights, Maple Heights, and Abdullahi have a bill that would declare gun violence as a public health crisis and create the Office of Firearms Violence Prevention in the Ohio Department of Children and Youth.
- Brewer also introduced a bill that would create an Ohio Task Force on Gun Violence.
“In the state of Ohio, you’re still allowed to possess a gun even if you have a domestic violence conviction. That’s absurd,” said Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein.
Parkland shooting
Nina Greenberg remembers worrying there would be a shooting at her Sylvania high school after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Orlando, Florida that killed 17 people in 2018.
“These thoughts provoked so much anxiety that I would often be thinking of escape routes or how to quickly text my parents I love them on the off chance there was a school shooting at my school,” she said.
Today, Greenberg is the president of Ohio State University’s Students Demand Action chapter and advocates for common-sense gun laws.
“My generation, we constantly fear being gunned down in our schools and communities in our homes,” she said. “Young people are bearing the brunt of this crisis.”Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, shared how she participated in Moms Demand Advocacy Day in 2018 three months after the Parkland shooting — months before being elected to the House of Representatives.
“I was advocating for this issue because I felt it was important to my community and it is important to me as a mother with three children,” she said.
Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in the United States.
“That’s insane,” Russo said. “But that is where we are today and our children deserve so much better than that. … Our children should not be dying because of gun violence in our community.”
Firearms accounted for nearly a fifth of childhood deaths (ages 1-18) and nearly 3,600 children died in gun-related incidents in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wonder database.
Ohioans want stricter gun laws
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll from last summer showed 92% of Ohioans want mandatory background checks for firearm purchases — including 99% Democrats and 88% Republicans.
The Suffolk University/USA Today poll surveyed 500 registered Ohio voters over the phone and their margin of error is +/- 4.4 percentage points.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law in 2022 that got rid of all training, background check and permitting requirements to carry a concealed weapon.
“So despite the gerrymandered super majority of extremists that seem to hide — I call it what it is — behind special interest groups we know that the majority of the people are in this position,” she said. “… Universal background checks are more popular than apple pie in the state of Ohio. I mean this is common-sense stuff.”
This story was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal and republished with permission.
