AURORA | For the second time in 2016, State Senator-elect Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, is traveling to the White House tomorrow for a roundtable discussion on gun violence. It will the be the last roundtable discussion on gun violence and prevention during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Fields’ son, Javad Marshall Fields, along with his fiancée, was gunned down almost 10 years ago, the day before he was set to testify as a witness to a murder. Since then, her political career has been marked by efforts to increase gun control and bring about criminal justice reform.
“It is an incredible honor to have been invited and asked to participate on this panel with leaders from across the country to discuss how we can continue to move forward on gun violence prevention and saving lives,” Fields said in a news release Tuesday. “It is also very bittersweet in that this will be the final roundtable discussion under President Obama, who has taken this issue head-on and very seriously like no other president we have seen in our modern history.”
Fields was instrumental to two controversial measures becoming law in 2013, limiting the size of ammunition magazines and expanding required background checks for gun purchases in Colorado.
Last month, Fields beat out candidates, Republican Sebastian Chunn and Libertarian Michele Poague, for the state Senate District 29 seat. Fields was first elected to serve in the Colorado House of Representatives in 2010. She is the first black woman elected to the state legislature to represent Aurora’s House District 42.