A candidate for U.S. Senate comes to Lima to talk about how to fix the growing problem of gun violence. Morgan Harper says over the past eight years over 5,000 people have lost their lives to gun violence in the state. Nearly one hundred that were under the age of eleven and around three-fourths of the deaths were of African Americans. Harper says there are commonsense things that can be done to help with the problem, like universal background checks for gun ownership and safety measures put in place in individuals’ homes. Harper adds that lawmakers should be focused on the root causes for the gun violence.
“We have a lot of folks that are living in chaos and crisis that are not making to live that have a lot of economic insecurity and that don’t have strong foundation around them. So what is it going to take to address that,” says Harper. “We need to be creating better-paying jobs, we need to be checking a lot of the concentration of corporate power that has left places all over Ohio and our state with fewer resources. We need to make sure we have the building blocks in place for people to be part of the community in a stronge, healthy way, including things like universal access to health care and mental health care.”
Harper will be facing Tim Ryan and Traci Johnson in the Democratic Primary on May 3rd.
