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BOSTON (State House News Service) - Rep. Bud Williams is tired of going to funerals. Rep. Francisco Paulino helped a young woman get into college, and then she was shot and killed. And Rep. Frank Moran lost a 21-year-old cousin to gun violence.
While debate over the contents and course of a sweeping gun reform bill has roiled Beacon Hill, representatives from cities and towns with significant populations of color are steady in their support of the measure, often fueled by a firsthand brush with tragedy.
Massachusetts has the lowest rate of fatal gun violence in the contiguous United States, but that statistic flattens every death into one measurement. It does not fully communicate how much more common losses are in less white, less affluent parts of the state.
"We see the ramifications of gun violence too often in our communities. You know, I live in the city of Lawrence. It's probably one of the poorest communities in the commonwealth, maybe in New England. Crime is 45 percent higher than the state average," Moran, a second assistant majority leader in Speaker Ron Mariano's inner circle, said in an interview. "We see that too often."
"All you've got to do is just turn the TV on and see what goes on in Boston almost daily -- you see a shooting, someone's kid gets hit," he added. "We need to do something. We can't just stick our head in the sand and hope it blows away."
The controversial legislation the House plans to take up Wednesday -- despite opposition from gun owners groups and police chiefs -- is a priority for the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus, most of whose members registered their support at a contentious, emotional public hearing last week.
"All of us who are standing here are the ones who see the brunt of much of the violence that you're talking about," Rep. Russell Holmes, a Boston Democrat, told his colleagues.
Paulino, a first-term Democrat who represents parts of Methuen and Lawrence, said many of his friends have lost children to gun violence. That includes the family of Angie Aristy, a 19-year-old woman who was fatally shot in Lawrence on Sept. 6. Paulino told fellow representatives that his family had helped Aristy win acceptance to Northern Essex Community College.
"Coming from Lawrence, I know how hard it is to visit a friend that his son or his wife have been killed with a firearm," Paulino said, urging action on the legislation to "prevent a Sandy Hook up here in Massachusetts."
State data reveal wide gaps in the rates at which gun violence claims lives from different demographic groups.
In 2020, the most recent year with Department of Public Health fatality data available, 270 Bay Staters died from firearm-related injuries, or 3.7 people per 100,000 residents. Men were significantly more likely to die from gun violence than women, with 7 deaths per 100,000 compared to 0.6 deaths per 100,000.
About 4.8 white, non-Hispanic men per 100,000 were killed by firearms in 2020. The rate for Hispanic men was nearly twice as high (9.2 deaths per 100,000), and for Black men, it was four and a half times higher (21.8 deaths per 100,000).
"That gap is huge," said Abrigal Forrester, CEO of the Center for Teen Empowerment in Roxbury. "The availability and access to guns in itself -- that's where the biggest gap is. The question becomes: how do we focus on stopping the pipeline? There's a pipeline of access to guns and availability in Black and brown communities that just doesn't exist, for many reasons, in communities that are more affluent."
"Conflict is prevalent in all communities. It's what you have access to to resolve that conflict that creates the problem of gun violence," Forrester added. "It's access to guns as an opportunity to resolve conflict that is where disparities come from."
Forrester said not only are people of color more likely to be victims of gun violence, but they also rarely receive the same kinds of support to recover from trauma as residents in wealthier, whiter areas.
"The experiences in Black and brown communities is young people, they may lose a friend and they go to school the next day," Forrester said. "They're expected to go about business as normal. In other communities, those communities will pause and have a day of mourning, or therapists come in to help young people navigate the experience."
For Moran, the topic "hits home": he lost a younger cousin after she was struck by "crossfire."
"She was 21 years old. I don't want to go into detail, but she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.
The bill House Democrats are pushing would cut across many areas of gun ownership, licensing and regulation. It expands the list of people who can petition the court to temporarily revoke guns from someone deemed a threat, requires every firearm frame or receiver to bear a serial number, updates the list of prohibited assault weapons, bans carrying firearms in certain spaces like schools and government buildings, creates a new offense for firing a weapon at a building, and more.
Gun owners and Second Amendment groups have been vociferous in their opposition, contending the reforms would infringe on their rights without making much of an impact on criminal activity.
Many law enforcement leaders also added their voice to the campaign against the bill. Members of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, which represents nearly 400 municipal and college campus departments, unanimously voted last week to oppose the legislation.
Mark Leahy, the organization's executive director and a former Northborough Police Department chief, told lawmakers the chiefs "believe some provisions may not be constitutional."
"Massachusetts continues to enjoy our country's lowest rate of gun murder deaths, and while one violent death is too many, this bill will not solve that problem," Leahy said at last week's committee hearing. "If you have a problem in one Massachusetts city or another, I'd suggest focusing your attention on that location while ensuring that other criminal violations are also suitably addressed and prosecuted there. The rest of us do not need the extra attention."
Massachusetts had the lowest rate of gun deaths in the contiguous United States in 2021. Its rate, 3.4 deaths per 100,000 people, was roughly one-tenth that of Mississippi, which had the highest in the nation at 33.9 deaths per 100,000 people, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control.
For Moran and other supporters of the legislation, that top position is little comfort.
"Anything above zero is too high," Moran said. "It's somebody's kid, somebody's parents. One is too many."
Written By Chris Lisinski/SHNS
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