The thing that makes our people so amazing is our resiliency. I believe that together we can find balance between protecting our children at school and preserving Second Amendment rights. At the same time reducing the number of guns on the street and the violence associated with it.
As a U.S. Navy veteran who has been trained with firearms and a father with school-aged children, I can understand how this hits home differently for the people of such a diverse city like ours.
There are over 393 million estimated civilian-owned firearms in the US today and a population of over 327 million people. The gun ownership rate in Colorado is just over 34%, which isn’t near the highest nor lowest in the country.
To be clear, there are many law-abiding responsible gun owners that play by the rules every day, but there are too many guns in the hands of people that shouldn’t have them. Most of us can agree that as a society we have certainly reached the point of crisis with gun violence. And, it must be stopped.
At the local level we must do everything we can to make our communities safer and turn the tide on gun violence. As your mayor, I’ll work with city council to create a commission on gun violence.
This commission would consist of community members, business leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, and first responders. They would work alongside urban policy research university centers like CU Denver’s ‘City Center’ to delve deeper in to local solutions.
By combining community expertise with data-backed research we support the goal of reducing gun violence and lowering the number guns on our streets. We need new and innovative ideas like what San Diego is doing by using canines to identify guns and gun powder that may be brought to their schools.
It is possible metal detectors might be another effective option, and Aurora should provide adequate school resource officer coverage for all our schools as well. Our children should feel safe when going to school and every parent should have the same confidence.
Let’s also face the fact that well over half of all gun violence is suicide related. This strikes home for me personally. At the age of 16 while I was off playing a junior varsity basketball game, I lost my 13-year-old cousin Michael; who was more like a brother to me. He went home after school, got his father’s handgun and took his own life.
When I got home that night the news shook me and our entire family to the point that I still have not fully coped with it. My younger brother who was also 13 at the time is still struggling with this trauma today. This is why it’s personal to me and I’m passionate about finding workable solutions.
All mental health agencies must complement each other’s resources to reach our students, working adults, and senior community alike to address early identification and prevent violent behavior. We need greater innovative collaboration between agencies, their experts, and people with real-life experiences working together to bring solutions to this problem.
Mass shootings, suicides, and other violent crimes where a gun is used has crippled our communities. Fear and knee-jerk solutions do little to actually solve the root of the problem. With the release of the movie ‘Joker’ this week, tensions are flaring as families in Aurora are still healing from the tragic theater shootings of 2012 tied to the ‘Dark Night Rises’ movie. Understandably so, but we cannot let fear keep us from living and continuing on with our journey.
The bottom line is we must stop gun violence and we must work together to do it. A sense of urgency, civility, respect, and commitment to find common ground is vital. When faced with an emergency or crisis we come together, we survive, we heal, and we turn the tide. We owe it to ourselves and future generations to do our part. I’m committed to it; I pray you are, too.
Ryan Frazier is a small business owner, co-founder of High Point Academy school, a former at-large Aurora city councilman, and a 2019 candidate for mayor.