Suzanne Saltisiak organized the One Day of Gun Violence Memorial at the
Virginia Beach Municipal Center on Tuesday, January 7, 2020.
(Stephen M. Katz)
Posted on 01/07/2020 11:13:56 AM PST by Perseverando
Suzanne Saltisiak organized the One Day of Gun Violence Memorial at the
Virginia Beach Municipal Center on Tuesday, January 7, 2020.
(Stephen M. Katz)
One hundred T-shirts lined up like tombstones were displayed on Municipal Center grounds Tuesday, a reminder of the consequences of gun violence, said the organizer.
“It’s a memorial for today’s victims,” said Virginia Beach resident Suzanne Saltisiak, a clinical social worker, who planted the colorful cotton shirts on the metal frames of leftover campaign yard signs.
Written on the shirts are statistics about gun violence and suicide, as well as quotes, including some from survivors of mass shootings.
On May 31, a city engineer killed 12 people and wounded four in Building 2 of the Municipal Center. At the time, it was the nation’s deadliest mass shooting of the year.
Last night, the City Council voted to make Virginia Beach a Second Amendment Constitutional City, a symbolic designation affirming the city’s commitment to the Second Amendment. Scores of gun rights advocates attended the Monday council meeting to urge council members to stand against proposed gun laws in the General Assembly.
Another large crowd of gun rights advocates are expected to show up Tuesday night when the council will consider a resolution asking the legislature to allow cities the option of prohibiting the public from carrying firearms into government buildings. Currently, state law allows registered gun owners to take their weapons into government buildings.
Saltisiak’s goal is not to ban gun ownership, but to find ways of limiting access of guns to people with mental illness.
“I don’t believe in taking guns away from responsible gun owners,” she said. “We need to find a middle ground to protect our citizens and to protect our kids.”
Saltisiak, who has a daughter in elementary school, wants to remind people of the daily toll of gun violence. This is the first time she has set up the memorial, but she would like to send the shirts to other cities as a traveling display.
Kate Loring stopped by the memorial around noon on Tuesday. Her daughter, Claire, was a senior in college when she was shot by her ex-boyfriend and died in 2006.
Loring left flowers and Claire’s picture next to one of the shirts, to “honor my daughter and to support the acknowledgement of gun deaths in this country,” she said.
School Board member Jessica Owens also stopped by. Owens serves on a child fatality team that looks at gun violence issues in the region.
“It’s certainly a local issue,” Owens said. “I hope that it will stay in the forefront of people’s minds.”
Councilwoman Sabrina Wooten stopped by, saying she wanted to see the memorial before Tuesday’s council meeting. She said that while she didn’t support the Second Amendment Constitutional City designation, she was glad citizens had the opportunity to express their point of view at Monday’s meeting.
“It’s heart-wrenching,” Wooten said. “It’s good to take the spotlight off of what’s going on politically and refocus on lives that are impacted everyday.”
How many of those shootings resulted in a conviction?
Maybe they could sell shirts that say ‘Moms Against a Constitutional Republic’.
City employee and a "self identified African American" aka loyal democrat.
We have to ask the democrats to disarm and quit killing innocent people while their demoKKKrat politicians work so hard to disarm innocent gun owners.
How many were shot during gang activities?
Where are the shirts honoring those who saved innocent lives?
VA is wanting to be more CA than CA.
Moms demand tyranny
or, same thing
Moms demand communism
would like to see a counter display of T-Shirts celebrating the lives SAVED by guns- bet it far far outnumbers the tragic incidents-
Victims of other types of violence? Meh? They must have had it coming to them.
a car i was parked by had a bumper sticker with a gun in a circle/slash.
“i survived school today”
Replace those names/t-shirts with the names of the babies aborted in the same time frame. Those babies didn’t stand a chance against the one who was supposed to love them. Outlaw abortions!
They might want to include all the American citizens who have been killed by illegal aliens. Just the drunk drivers would fill a football field.
How about the untold defenseless millions slaughtered by Russian and Cuban and Chinese and Cambodians and etc etc etc.
They all lived in gun free zones. Except that only the govt had guns. Liberals are fools.
Someone should glue popsicle stick together and make little tiny t-shirt for them and put, “Dead from Abortion” on the t-shirts. Put out thousands of them among those other t-shirts.
I’m 100% in agreement with you. Pro-life dittos!
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