By Kathy Wray Coleman, Publisher, Editor-n-Chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper
CLEVELAND,Ohio- Community activists will discuss gun violence and gun control measures during a segment today, Dec. 23 at 5 pm on the Art McKoy University of Common Sense Show on WERE 1490 AM Talk Radio in Cleveland, a Radio One news station. The show call in phone number is 216-578-1490.
Guests for the show are Black NRA members, including Community Activist Donna Walker Brown.
At 7 pm after the show airs Walker Brown, a motorcycle club member who says she will run for Cleveland mayor next year, said that the Omens Motorcycle Club, based in the Buckeye-Woodland area on Cleveland's predominantly Black east side, will hold a vigil in front of the radio station building at Radio One, that also houses WZAK 93.1 FM, 2510 St. Clair Ave. in Cleveland. The candlelight vigil, said Walker Brown, is to remember the 20 Connecticut first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School and six educators gunned down at the school last week by suspected shooter Adam Lanza, who then turned the gun on himself.
The shootings have reignited the national debate on gun violence and gun control.
McKoy (pictured in hat), like many Cleveland area community activists, is for gun control and is against the policies of the National Rifle Association, He says he welcomes the community discussion around the controversial issue.
Meanwhile, Ohio State Rep. Bill Patmon (pictured (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat, has introduced a bill in the Ohio State Legislature around metal detectors in schools to protect public school children in Ohio and wants a state law with criminal penalties for parents and guardians that do not have locks on guns that get into the hands of children only to result in avoidable shooting tragedies of innocent children and other people.
"These bills are designed to protect the children in Ohio as we as state legislators are required to do," said Patmon, a junior state representative and former city council member of Ward 8 who lost a bid for mayor in 2009 against current Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.
In the wake of the deadly Connecticut shootings, the NRA has called for teachers from across the nation to have a gun for protection in every public school classroom, a radical posture by most standards but not a surprise coming from the conservative gun toting group.
