KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Grandparents For Gun Safety, and Moms Demand Action, gathered Friday evening at Mill Creek Park on National Gun Violence Awareness Day to focus on urgent need for gun reform.
Collectively, the participants have seen decades of how gun violence can shatter a community.
"But the public I think has finally said, 'This is enough,'" Judy Sherry, founder and president of Grandparents for Gun Safety, said. "We cannot keep killing children and enduring the ramifications from these shootings, their families will never be the same."
Carly Mitchell felt that loss when her friend Mona Lisa Bruce, was murdered last summer in the Citadel neighborhood.
"It’s very hard to process, very hard to move on," Mitchell, who is also an advocate with the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, said. "Especially because of the reason it was, it could have been prevented."
It's one of the reasons she brought her 7-year-old daughter to Mill Creek Park on the day to remember the victims and survivors of gun violence.
"I love how people rally together that haven't even been impacted by it at all, that is more meaningful to me," Mitchell said. "Like, that's really meaningful."
Grandparents for Gun Safety was created after the Sandy Hook massacre that killed 20 children.
"10 years later, we're in the same boat," Sherry said. "And so I'm here to say, I may not live long enough to see something happen. But it will happen."
Many who attended the rally have reached out to legislators asking for tougher gun laws. Ken O'Renick has called Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt's office.
"And now he's retiring, he has nothing to lose, he needs to get a backbone and start voting, the moral the truth about what this whole violence issue is in guns," O'Renick said.
As Congress struggles to pass gun reform legislation, local lawmakers face similar challenges whenever they've tried to do the same.
Missouri Rep. Emily Weber has proposed a law that would require gun owner to report any stolen or missing firearms within 72 hours.
"We have to continue going forward and moving forward, because we can't wait for the next massacre that's going to happen," Weber said.
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