I’m a two-time gun violence survivor. The first time happened when I was six, during a fight between my mother and her first husband that had escalated into a beating. When I called for help on the telephone, my stepfather stuck a shotgun in my face and told me to hang up and go back to my room. I did, but only after I told my father to come and get us.
In the 1980s, my mother got remarried. Laura was the oldest of my five new step-siblings and the tiniest. She was five feet one inch tall with deep auburn hair, dark brown eyes, and a deep, throaty voice with a laugh like maple syrup.
On July 7, 1990, she was shot in the forehead with a .38 in front of her two children, aged two and four. Her assailant came to the hospital and shot himself in front of the cafeteria. My four-year-old nephew called 911, and Laura lived for six weeks in ICU. I will never forget seeing her tiny body and the gruesome injuries that she suffered because of gun violence. Every day I saw her and held her hand until she died from infection.
Not one more.