{"id":19582,"date":"2022-08-15T14:41:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T14:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/?p=19582"},"modified":"2022-08-15T19:47:36","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T19:47:36","slug":"church-member-at-celebration-of-gun-reform-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/2022\/church-member-at-celebration-of-gun-reform-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Church of the Brethren member attends President Biden\u2019s celebration of gun reform bill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Tom Mauser of Prince of Peace Church of the Brethren in Littleton, Colo., in mid-July was one of those invited to attend President Biden\u2019s celebration of the signing of the first gun reform bill in nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He reported, \u201cThere were at least 500 people there, I\u2019d guess, and most were gun violence survivors, activists, and experts, along with members of Congress. I got to speak to President Biden briefly (thanks to Congressman Joe Neguse of Boulder!), met Senator Amy Klobuchar, and got to visit with many other victims and activists I\u2019ve known over the years. I had the honor of sitting with Rep. Neguse in the Congressional seating area, in the fourth row, close to the podium.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mauser\u2019s son Daniel Mauser was one of the students killed in the mass shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. After losing his son to gun violence, he took a one-year leave of absence from his job to lobby the state legislature to pass stronger gun laws. When they failed to do so, he led the effort to offer Colorado voters a ballot initiative to close the gun show loophole. Colorado voters passed that initiative in 2000 by a vote of 70 percent to 30 percent. (See a Newsline report marking the 20th anniversary of the Columbine shootings at https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/2019\/this-journey-is-one-that-no-one-should-have-to-bear\/<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the years since, Mauser has continued his advocacy work and is active in other peacemaking efforts of the congregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mauser was invited by Neguse to shake Pres. Biden\u2019s hand, despite a crush of people. \u201cNeguse called out to Biden that the father of a Columbine victim was here,\u201d Mauser said. \u201cA few minutes later Biden came by and shook my hand and we spoke. I thanked Biden, saying that after being asked many times why nothing has been done about gun reform since Columbine (at the federal level), we could now say something was done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mauser noted that Neguse is the first Eritrean-American elected to Congress and Colorado\u2019s first Black member of Congress. \u201cHe was in a nearby high school at the time of Columbine and was very impacted by it and my activism,\u201d Mauser said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlso, I would add one of the most impactful statements from a speaker was from Uvalde\u2019s only pediatrician, who related how many of the children are traumatized and many are even reluctant to return to school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLike many there, early on I was disappointed at how little was in the bill,\u201d Mauser said. \u201cBut now there\u2019s some pretty strong agreement that there are some good things in this bill, and that this was just the beginning, that we had to now build on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was pleased with Biden\u2019s speech. While he outlined the good things in the bill, he also spent time saying we had to do more, listing the things we need to fight for: universal background checks, a safe storage law, and an assault weapons ban. It was a forward looking and hopeful message!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Tom Mauser shaking hands with the President, in a photo taken by Colorado Senator Rhonda Fields. Photo courtesy of Tom Mauser<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Tom Mauser (at center) with Colorado Congressmen Jason Crow (at left) and Joe Neguse (at right). Photo courtesy of Tom Mauser<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Mauser of Prince of Peace Church of the Brethren in Littleton, Colo., in mid-July was one of those invited to attend President Biden\u2019s celebration of the signing of the first gun reform bill in nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1703],"tags":[3,2491,2489,2443,1263,2157,314,2490],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-19582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-of-the-brethren-newsline","tag-church-of-the-brethren","tag-columbine","tag-gun-control","tag-gun-violence","tag-peace","tag-president-biden","tag-prince-of-peace-church-of-the-brethren","tag-tom-mauser"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19585,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19582\/revisions\/19585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19582"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=19582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}