|
|
Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
 |
|
|
Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
|
(2/12/00 Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper)
by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
My pastor, Dr. Walter S. Thomas, announced during a recent Sunday service that the grandson of one of our deacons had been found dead. He urged us to attend the funeral and offer the family our support.
I was struck by the fact that Jacoby Fagan was only fourteen years old at the time of his death. AHe was viciously murdered,@ a friend told me after church. AThe police haven=t found out who did it.@
I went to the funeral, and when I arrived, people were standing in a very long line waiting to pay their respects to Jacoby=s family. Many of them were his classmates from Pimlico Middle School.
As I approached the black casket, I was thinking about how his young life had been so cruelly shortened to a small fraction of mine. AI have come here to comfort Jacoby=s family and friends, but I also am here to feel their pain,@ I thought. AI must never become desensitized to any lost life.@
Our memories can be kind. We forget how it felt to stand by a mother as she cried for her dead child - the child who just a few years earlier had sprung from her womb full of life. We forget the wailing children, calling out the name of their lost friend.
During his life, Jacoby Fagan enjoyed sports and was liked by everyone. The children who sat near me at his service remembered his talking and joking with them.
A
Now, he is silent,@ I thought. ANow, I must speak for him.@As I paid my respects to Jacoby=s mother, I thought about all of the weeping mothers who have placed their small, softly-trembling hands in mine, pulling so strongly at my heart that I can not let go.
A
America is at war with its children,@ I reflected later, driving home from the funeral. AThe parents of our murdered children cry out in pain. . . .@We are killing our young people in every way imaginable, but guns are at the core of most of these deaths.
From the national Crime Gun Trace Analysis Reports of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), we know that illegal gun sales are an important source of the weapons used to commit serious crimes in 27 hard-hit American communities.
In Baltimore, more than one-half of the young people committing crimes with a handgun utilize a semi-automatic pistol (a Davis or a Lorcin .380; a Raven .25; or a Ruger, Smith & Wesson or Glock 9mm). Too many of these weapons have been illegally purchased from firearms dealers in this state.
Last week, President Clinton announced the ATF=s first nationwide analysis of illegal gun trafficking. Commerce in Firearms in the United States concludes that only slightly more than 1,000 of the nation=s gun dealers (only 1.2%) account for 57% of the crime weapons we can trace back to the point of sale.
While parents throughout America mourn, a small but deadly group of arms dealers profits from the sale of illegal guns. All too often, their customers are children.
All reasonable Americans should support the President=s decision to crack down on illegal firearms trafficking. Additional inspection and enforcement efforts will be targeted at the 1,000 gun dealers who had 10 or more crime guns traced to them in 1999.
This year, we must answer the President
=s call for state-based licensing of all handgun purchasers. We must enact common sense measures to close the gun show loophole, ban the importation of large capacity ammunition clips and require child safety locks.This year, we must take the profit out of violent death. We must find, prosecute and imprison the illegal arms dealers.
The Constitution of the United States is not a collective suicide pact. We cannot honorably speak of self-protection while our children die.
We cannot allow Jacoby Fagan=s voice to be silenced. We must speak for him. Our requiem to the memory of this nation=s dead children must be an America free from handguns.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.
