Milwaukee faith and community leaders call for new gun violence prevention measures

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- In the wake of the Madison school shooting and recent school threats in Kenosha and Milwaukee, there are renewed calls for change towards gun violence prevention.

Friday, faith and community leaders gathered at Milwaukee City Hall, calling for new legislation. "While we should all be gathered here during the season of peace and thankfulness and forgiveness, we're coming together once again to mourn another tragedy," said Darryl Morin, National President at Forward Latino and co-founder of the 80% Coalition, a non-partisan organization advocating for gun violence prevention measures.

The coalition is made up of more than 35 advocacy, business, faith, health, and mental health organizations in Wisconsin. They say Monday's school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison was preventable and more needs to be done to protect children.

"Gun violence has reached epidemic levels impacting people from every walk of life in almost every community in our nation," said Roberta Clark, with the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.

Giselle Grob-Polewski is a junior at Milwaukee High School of the Arts who advocates for violence prevention. "We live with the fear that one day we will go to school and come home in a body bag," they said.

Grob-Polewski says they want to see more people in the community step up to support violence prevention.

"If we can convince the adults to truly all vote in the midterms, vote in the election...get out and vote for the policies that are going to protect gun violence prevention policies then we can really help end gun violence," they said.

The coalition is asking Wisconsinites to contact their local officials to help push for new legislation towards gun violence prevention.