Gun Violence Awareness Day In RI: Wear Orange, Other Things To Know

RHODE ISLAND — National Gun Violence Awareness Day is Friday. With the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, the Buffalo, New York, supermarket shooting and Wednesday’s deadly Tulsa, Oklahoma, hospital shooting still fresh in our minds, Rhode Island residents likely don't need reminding of how gun violence has created anxiety and grief in our families and communities.

One way to show support for Gun Violence Awareness Day is by attending a Wear Orange event. There aren't any official events in Rhode Island, but there are plenty in neighboring Massachusetts, the closest being the one at Brockton City Hall on Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. It's one of dozens of gun violence awareness events around the country, sponsored by the Everytown for Gun Safety organization and its partners.

Adding urgency to the observances: In 2020, gun violence killed more children than car crashes, for many years the leading cause of death among children, according to researchers who took a deep dive into federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gun mortality data. Their findings were published as a research letter in the New England Journal of Medicine.

They found that from 2019 to 2020, gun-related deaths jumped by nearly 30 percent among Americans ages 1-19.

Overall, gun violence spiked to a 25-year high in 2020, the CDC said in a report last month.

That year, the latest for which data is available, 79 percent of all homicides and 53 percent of all suicides involved guns, and the firearms homicide rate surged 35 percent from 2019, the CDC said.

Gun violence has taken a toll here as well.

In Rhode Island, the firearms mortality rate in 2020 was 5.1 for every 100,000 people.

Here are more things to know about Gun Violence Awareness Day:

How Did It Start?

The first Gun Violence Awareness Day was held on June 2, 2015, on what would’ve been Hadiya Pendleton’s 18th birthday. She was fatally shot on a Chicago playground on Jan. 29, 2013, when she was 15, and a week after she marched in President Barack Obama’s second inaugural parade.

Once a single-day commemoration, it has grown to a three-day observance in cities around the country. People are encouraged to wear orange throughout the June 3-5 weekend.

Why Wear Orange?

Shortly after her death, Pendelton’s friends began wearing orange — the color hunters wear as a safety measure — to commemorate her life.

Erica Ford of the New York-based gun violence prevention program Life Camp Inc. spearheaded the effort to make orange the defining color of the movement. Now it’s worn across the country to bring awareness to the hundreds of people injured or wounded by gun violence every day, according to organizers.

How To Show Support

One of the best ways to counter gun violence is through policy, according to the Wear Orange organization. Its website provides a link to email one's U.S. senators and urge them to vote on House-approved gun reform legislation that has been stalled since 2019.

Be aware the link goes to a boilerplate message from Everytown for Gun Safety. You can direct original letters to:

• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse at this online form, or
• Sen. Jack Reed at this online form.