Democrats bring out shooting victims to speak on final day of DNC

The final night of the Democratic National Convention will feature testimony from victims of gun violence and activists seeking more gun control measures.

Before Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage, former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head during a campaign event in 2011, Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA), who lost her son in 2012 from the cause of gun violence and the “Tennessee Three,” a group of state lawmakers who were expelled from the Tennessee legislature for leading a protest against gun violence in the wake of the 2023 Covenant school shooting, will all speak at the DNC on Thursday .

“I was here in 2016… At the time, then-Secretary (Hillary) Clinton was the only presidential candidate who ever explicitly had a full gun violence prevention agenda as a political agenda that she was pursuing,” McBath told NBC News. . “Here we are in 2024. It’s completely different. It’s completely different now. We are now the Davids to the Goliaths of the scourge of gun violence in this country.”

Gun violence is among the top issues for Democrats this election cycle. In the Democrats’ 92-page party platform, five pages are devoted to how lawmakers plan to improve gun safety, policing and public safety.

“All Americans deserve to be free from fear: to be confident that their children will come home safely from the store or the playground, and to know that their loved one will come home safely from police patrol on the streets.” is shown in the platform.

The Biden administration created the first White House Office on Gun Violence Prevention, which Harris was tasked with overseeing.

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The office has worked to ensure that the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, is implemented. This 2022 law imposes federal penalties for firearms trafficking, increases background checks for people under 21, and ensures that people convicted of domestic violence are barred from buying firearms.

In addition to taking the stage at the DNC, McBath will moderate a discussion between activists and survivors of gun violence on how best to address gun violence. Panelists include Abbey Clements, a second-grade teacher and survivor of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., and Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter was killed in a 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School from Uvalde, Texas.