I knew that gun violence plagues our nation every day, but it didn’t really hit home until after Sandy Hook.
— Erin Dando, South Carolina Chapter,
Moms Demand Action
A group of mothers from across the state rallied outside the Statehouse on Saturday morning in support of gun control legislation.
The women were part of the South Carolina branch of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group created in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting in December. Nationally, the group has already amassed more than 70,000 members.
Erin Dando of Greenville leads the South Carolina chapter. She has three children under the age of 10 and has been building a grassroots network for the last two months.
“I knew that gun violence plagues our nation every day, but it didn’t really hit home until after Sandy Hook.”
Dando knows that in South Carolina, a strong 2nd Amendment state, changing gun laws will not be easy. But she’s optimistic. “The more people I talk to the more I see we can all agree that gun violence must stop,” she said. “It’s a marathon not a sprint.”
Also attending the rally was Gina Richards. She has four children—three girls and a boy. The girls attend Ashley Hall School where a woman named Alice Boland pointed a gun at teachers last month. Richards daughters were among the students who were kept in lockdown inside the school.
The incident spurred Richards to get involved. “It was horrifying and it could have been much worse,” Richards said. “Had the laws of this state been tighter Alice Boland would not have been able to get a gun.”
Read the entire story at standrews.patch.com
