Race for Peace activist/advocate Alim Howell on Friday held a Zoom conference with Anna Keilly, a legislative aide to U.S. Sen. John Fetterman.
Howell believes gun violence is a public health crisis in Pennsylvania that affects many people and communities. Factors that contribute to gun violence, he said, include a lack of safety training, open carrying and easy access to firearms.
Keilly is based out of Fetterman’s Washington, D.C. office, working on the issues of violence prevention alongside chief counsel Jason Smith.
Topics that were discussed during the conference session were gun safety measures, universal background checks, red flag laws and more proactive efforts to get illegal guns out of the state of Pennsylvania.
“I wanted to have a meeting about what is going on about gun violence at the U.S. Senate level of political government because it represents our whole state of PA itself. Ghost guns still are a main problem and are causing most of the homicidal shootings. The ghost guns have to be removed to prevent gun violence from happening,” Howell said.
“We understand that there is a problem and we are concerned. There is new legislation that should be passed for an assault weapons ban for our state of Pennsylvania. We do not know as of yet when the bill will be passed and put into effect but the bill is still in progress. It originated from California. It is a bill that would prohibit the sale, manufacture and possession of assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices,” Keilly said.For more information, go to fetterman.senate.gov. ••
