Government

OP-ED: Details of Gun Control Legislation Being Considered on Beacon Hill

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{The following piece was written by State Sen. Will Brownsberger (D – Belmont) who represents Watertown in the Massachusetts State House}

The House and Senate have both now given initial approval to legislation to make it easier to take guns away from people who are a risk of harming themselves or others. It will likely be finalized and enacted before the end of this session. We already have strong laws that allow a person to seek protection of the court, including removal of firearms, when he or she fears violence from a partner. And school shootings are hard to predict. The best argument for the new legislation is that it will reduce the dominant but least visible category of gun death: suicide.

Gun Control

Watertown Middle School Students Call for End of School Violence During Walkout

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While thousands of high schools around the United States joined the National Walkout movement to raise awareness of school safety in the wake of the deadly shootings in Parkland, Fla., few middle schools joined in. On Thursday morning, Watertown Middle School held its own walk out, which hundreds of students attended. 

The organizers, most of whom were eighth-graders, gathered on the steps of the old West Junior High School building on Bemis Street and addressed the students who joined the walk out. The group spoke about trying to stop the violence and read the names of all of those killed in Parkland, adding some details about each of their lives. Eighth-grader Alex Thuene, who co-founded Watertown Middle School’s Stop Gun Violence Committee with eighth-grader Adham Hussein, addressed the students during the Watertown Middle School Walkout. “Seventeen lives were lost.

Gun Control

Watertown Students Pour Out to Join National Walk Out for Gun Control

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First about 20 students gathered outside Watertown High School, then the number doubled and soon people were pouring out of the front door until hundreds of students filled the area in front of the school as part of the National Walk Out calling for safer campuses and gun control in the wake of the shootings in Parkland, Fla. The walk out had been scheduled for last March 14, to coincide with rallies across the nation, but a nor’easter put those plans on ice for a week. The event was organized by students and they were not required to come out for the Walk Out. A few hundred students left school for the 17 minute event. They were joined by about a dozen members of Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment, who stood across the street from the school.

Around Town

Event in Watertown Will Make Posters in Preparation for Gun Control Rallies

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Organizers of an event where posters will be made for two upcoming rallies for gun safety sent out the following information:

Poster Making Workshop, Sunday, March 4, 6:30 – 8 p.m., First Parish Watertown, 35 Church Street, Watertown. Come make posters for the National School Walkout Day on Wednesday, March 14, at 10 a.m., and The March For Our Lives, on Saturday, March 24, at noon, on The Boston Common. Some pre-printed posters by a local artist as well as poster-making supplies will be provided.

Government

Town Manager Signs Letter Urging Congress to Vote on Gun Control Bills

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Watertown Town Manager Michael Driscoll signed a letter urging Congress to take a vote on gun control legislation, along with other mayors and town mangers from Massachusetts. 

The letter was organized by Congresswoman Katherine Clark, who presented it at a recent gathering of municipal leaders from the 5th Massachusetts Congressional District. See the letter from the mayors below. The letter urges House Speaker Paul Ryan to allow a vote on legislation that would prevent suspected terrorists from obtaining guns, and expand background checks on those seeking to buy guns. The meeting was for town managers, mayors and town administrators, but Driscoll could not attend. Instead, Town Councilor Susan Falkoff attended.

Elections

LETTER: Watertown Resident, Doctor Endorses Warren Tolman for AG

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To the Editor:I am a physician trained in pediatrics, a father of a young son and a concerned resident of Watertown. I am writing to urge your readers to support Warren Tolman for attorney general because he supports common-sense gun reform. The recent untimely death of James Brady, killed many years later by an assassin’s bullet, makes the subject of gun reform more poignant than ever.According to the CDC, between 1999 and 2010, 4,698 children aged 1-14 senselessly died by gunfire, and another 7,500 children are hospitalized each year for the same reason.Warren knows that a solution to many of these deaths and injuries is literally at our fingertips. Technology currently exists that would allow fingerprint readers to unlock the firing mechanism of guns. If such a system were mandated, no child would ever be able to have an accident with a smart gun that did not belong to him or her.