Greenwich Wears Orange to Honor Victims and Survivors of Gun Violence

By Sydney Floch

Members of the community gathered in Greenwich Town Hall on Monday to honor the lives of both victims and survivors of gun violence. June 2 is designated as National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

According to First Selectman Fred Camillo’s proclamation, the day honors the birthday of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old high school student who was shot and killed as an innocent bystander in a park in Chicago in 2013. Her friends honored her memory by wearing orange on her birthday because hunters wear the color orange to protect themselves. This year would have been Pendleton’s 28th birthday.

The event also acknowledged the passage of House Bill 7042, “An Act Concerning Implementation of the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act.”

According to a release from the Office of Connecticut Attorney General William Tong on Monday, the bill will allow the office of the attorney general to bring civil enforcement actions against gun manufacturers, distributors, marketers and retailers who fail to implement reasonable controls to prevent the sale of firearms to straw purchasers, firearm traffickers, individuals prohibited from possessing firearms under state or federal law, or individuals the firearm industry member has reasonable cause to believe intend to use it for a crime or to cause harm to themselves or others.

The bill also permits private citizens, or corporation counsels on behalf of municipalities, the right to bring suits for loss or injury as a result of a failure to implement those reasonable controls.

“There is no legal immunity for reckless bad actors in the firearms industry who mislead and deceive or ignore our state’s strong gun safety laws. I am prepared to use the full weight of my civil enforcement authority to protect Connecticut families from gun violence. Connecticut has some of the strongest gun safety laws on the books in recognition of our state’s terrible history. This bill ensures Connecticut will continue to lead in keeping our communities safe,” Tong in the release.

Selectperson Janet Stone McGuigan, emcee of Monday’s event, said that the passage of the bill under the State Senate was a sign of progress.

“But that news was soon followed by the sickening report of the Waterbury mall shooting,” she said, adding, “There is still so much work to be done.”

Back in March, four young women – one 18 and the rest in their mid-20s, were wounded when a suspect fired a .40-caliber handgun seven times in the Brass Mill Center Mall.

In his proclamation, Camillo said that in 2024, 210 people were killed in Connecticut by firearms, which are also the second-leading cause of suicide within the state, and account for approximately half of the state’s gun-related deaths.

The proclamation also stated that more than 80% of child firearm suicides use a gun belonging to a family member, and approximately 75% of all school shooters obtain the gun they used from their homes or the home of a relative.

Women who have been abused by their partner are also five times as likely to be killed if that partner owns a firearm.

President and CEO of the YWCA Greenwich, Mary Lee Kiernan,  reaffirmed the intersection between domestic abuse and gun violence by sharing research from the Center for Disease Control. She also shared that the Greenwich Police Department, along with other police departments across the country, have a screening tool called the Lethality Assessment Program, or LAP screen.

According to Kiernan, one of the 11 questions in the survey asks the respondent about behaviors and conditions within their relationship. One of the questions asks if their partner has a gun. If the respondent answers yes, they are immediately eligible to be placed in a shelter for protection.

Kiernan said that Greenwich Police had reached out to the YWCA Greenwich 30 times in a 12-month period after each victim from the LAP screen was deemed was eligible to go to a shelter. She said that these people were mostly women, and in 2023, Greenwich Police Department reached out 41 times.

“Still, the work continues to have common sense legislation, both nationally and in Connecticut,” Camillo said. “Connecticut has been trying to be able to be at the forefront of that, and so thank you all for your advocacy.”