It is startling but not shocking to learn that 99.8 of Americans know someone who has been impacted by gun violence (Kalesan et at, 2016). Gun violence prevention advocacy is in my DNA. I inherited the impact of generational trauma from my father, who was orphaned at 12 years of age by one of the first mass shootings in this country. On September 6,1949, my father was a terrified 12-year-old boy hiding in a closet as his entire family, including his mother, father, and grandmother, were murdered, along with 10 other people, by a hostile neighbor with a semiautomatic weapon. My father may have physically survived the killings, but he was traumatized all his remaining days. Ironically, my father was buried on September 6, 2009, the 60th anniversary of the murders.
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