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After Uvalde horror, lawmaker to hold town hall on crime and guns

The advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety says an average of 33 children and teenagers die by gunshot annually in New Mexico, and that firearms are the leading cause of death in that age group.
Lisa Zins via Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons CC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
The advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety says an average of 33 children and teenagers die by gunshot annually in New Mexico, and that firearms are the leading cause of death in that age group.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Democratic Representative Pamelya Herndon vowed to reintroduce a stalled law designed to prevent children getting access to firearms, one of several gun control bills that failed to make it into law in this year’s short legislative session. She said Tuesday’s horrific shooting, in which 19 children and two adults were killed, underscored how important it was to keep trying to make people safer.

The community must, "raise the importance of us talking about crime and gun safety, and then particularly how we focus on protecting our children," she said.

Herndon is co-moderating a town hall to discuss crime on Thursday evening at 5:30 pm at the Holiday Park Community Center in Albuquerque.

"Members of the Albuquerque Police Department, the FBI representative will be there, there will be a representative of the courts," she said, adding that Angel Garcia, an advocate for people convicted of crimes, will speak about ways to support people better so they commit fewer crimes.

She called for people from the community to attend with their own ideas.

Alice Fordham joined the news team in 2022 after a career as an international correspondent, reporting for NPR from the Middle East and later Latin America and Europe. She also worked as a podcast producer for The Economist among other outlets, and tries to meld a love of sound and storytelling with solid reporting on the community. She grew up in the U.K. and has a small jar of Marmite in her kitchen for emergencies.
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