Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
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Last Thursday, my wife Patricia and I attended a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on gun policies. We did not go there to be arrested, but after we were kicked out of a hearing on gun legislation, I ended up with my face pushed against the hallway floor, arms wrestled behind my back while a team of Capitol Police handcuffed me. (One Republican legislator likened us to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.)
After our son Joaquin was murdered in 2018—by a fellow student with an assault weapon while attending high school in Parkland, Florida—we founded a nonprofit, Change the Ref, to empower young people to fight for sane and safe gun policies. Since that time we have refused to be silent, particularly in the faces of the powerful, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re a Republican or a Democrat—they’ll hear our voices, as we demand to know why children in this country are no safer than they were after the Parkland shooting (or any of the many before and since).