Hundreds gather in Fayetteville to support gun control

FAYETTEVILLE -- At least 200 people crowded into the St. Paul's Episcopal Church auditorium Tuesday to support regulating guns.

Children sat on adults' knees. Some people held signs supporting gun restrictions or sported red shirts for the group called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. People lined the back walls shoulder to shoulder when chairs ran out.

Moms Demand Action

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is a grassroots movement to reform gun laws. The movement started six years ago, after a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 26 people, mostly schoolchildren, dead. The group says it’s nonpartisan and has six Arkansas chapters. At least one more group is starting in Bentonville. A student-led group also is in the works.

Source: Staff report

"Some of us entered this room with hope -- hope that this time things will change," said Teresa Youngblood, faith outreach leader for the group.

Moms Demand Action members support gun safety education, universal background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, they said. The movement looks to elect political leaders with similar ideas.

The meeting was in response to a recent school shooting, said Catherine Snyder, organizer and volunteer. Tuesday's meeting was held six days after a shooting in which 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The group typically meets once a month -- about 30 people attended in January -- but the turnout Tuesday was huge, Snyder said.

By 4 p.m., more than 180 people had responded to a social media page saying they planned to attend the meeting. That didn't count some attendees who said they knew about the meeting solely by word of mouth.

Jan Moon and her longtime friend Teresa Uth attended the meeting because they have grandchildren in schools and daughters teaching, they said. The most-recent shooting has stoked fears among families, educators and police.

"It's just so scary -- you just have no control," Moon said.

The National Rifle Association didn't respond to an after-hours request for a comment Tuesday.

The fear hasn't subsided, said Zara Raezer, 18, a Fayetteville High School senior. The recent massacre has spurred copy-cat threats.

Two Northwest Arkansas students, one in Berryville and one in Fayetteville, were arrested last week in connection with making threats to shoot people. On Tuesday, Prairie Grove police said in a news release that a boy was arrested in connection with writing "Everyone will die" on a board at school.

After the Fayetteville threat, about a third of Raezer's peers didn't go to school, Raezer said. Officials in Berryville said schoolchildren there also were pulled out of school. Raezer said schoolchildren have a "deep-rooted fear" of mass shootings.

Nationally and in Northwest Arkansas, students are becoming active. A Students Demand Action group is in the works for Northwest Arkansas, Snyder said.

More than 100 students who survived the shooting at Stoneman Douglas climbed on three buses Tuesday and headed for Florida's capital to tell lawmakers to do something to prevent another mass shooting.

Some lawmakers have also indicated a willingness to regulate guns. For example, President Donald Trump said he signed a memo asking the U.S. Department of Justice to look into regulations to ban devices such as the rapid-fire bump stocks involved in last year's Las Vegas shooting massacre.

Northwest Arkansas needs leaders who support common-sense regulations, Snyder and others said.

"Our children deserve better. Our elected officials have had plenty of time to enact policies that will save lives," Snyder said. "If they won't, we will throw them out [of office]."

NW News on 02/21/2018

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