Gun Control Activists Start New SDA Chapter at Mac

The following is an excerpt from The MAC Weekly to demonstrate the views of gun control activists. It does not reflect the opinions of Gun Dynamics:

The Feb. 13 event was hosted by the founders of a new Macalester chapter of Students Demand Action (SDA), a grass-roots, student-led initiative to advocate for gun control and gun safety legislation.

At the end of the Fall 2018 semester, the Civic Engagement Center brought together the founders of Mac’s new SDA chapter, Ryan Perez ’20, Alex Young-Williams ’20, Pierce Hastings ’22 and Joe McMurtrey ’22 based on their shared history of gun control activism. For Hastings, that activism began when his family experienced first-hand the trauma of gun violence.

On April 14, 2014, Hastings’ aunt, Terri LaManno, was shot to death by a white supremacist in the parking lot of the Jewish nursing home where her mother resided. The shooter, self-proclaimed Neo-Nazi and Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., also shot and killed a fourteen-year-old boy and his grandfather at a Jewish community center earlier that day.

“It really shook my family to the core, and we didn’t really know what to do or how to combat this,” Hastings said. “It’s something you never expect to hear.”

Since LaManno’s death, Hastings has made it a point to advocate for gun control and against gun violence. Inspired further by the resistance of the Parkland students in 2018, he worked on political campaigns and participated in the March for Our Lives last April.

“People have been passionate [about gun control activism], but this was a whole new type of force. It was the first time where I feel like a youth voice—younger than college-age—was being listened to politically,” Hastings said.