COMMUNITY JUSTICE ACTION FUND APPLAUDS SENATOR CÉSAR BLANCO'S S.C.R. 8 FOR DECLARING GUN VIOLENCE A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS
Community Justice Action Fund issued the following statement:
For Immediate Release
February 4, 2021
Contact
Andrea L. Pino-Silva
Communications Director
andrea@cjactionfund.org
The deadly public health crisis of gun violence has impacted communities across Texas for decades. The Community Justice Action Fund supports Senator César Blanco's bill proclaiming gun violence as a public health crisis. Texas Senate Bill S.C.R. 8 acknowledges this reality, and we will vigorously advocate for its passage.
The data is clear: in Texas, someone is killed with a gun every three hours, and guns are the state's third-leading cause of death for children aged 1 to 17; guns make domestic violence incidents far more likely to end in fatalities, and more than 60 percent of intimate partner homicides involve a firearm. Black and Hispanic men make up less than 25% of Texas’s population, but account for nearly 63% of the state’s gun homicide victims. In Texas, black men ages 18–24 are nearly 11 times more likely than white men the same age to be murdered with a gun.
Texas Senator César J. Blanco
"Gun violence is a public health crisis that affects individuals, families and entire communities across generations. Sadly we know this devastation in El Paso firsthand when a domestic terrorist targeted our community on August 3, 2019. As a public health crisis, the gun violence epidemic warrants a data-driven science-based approach to solving."
Thia'a Rahman, CJAF Distributed Organizing Manager
“We thank Senator Blanco for his continued support and leadership in the necessary fight to end gun violence in Texas. Gun violence is a systemic public health issue, and addressing it requires systemic solutions that frame gun violence as more than an individual problem, but as a threat to an entire community's health. This resolution is a necessary first step in the long fight to end gun violence in our communities. ”
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