Question: There seems to be
a continuous rise of gun violence across New York City, as an influential young
man in this City and a US Congressman, what is your take on this epidemic and
your suggestion to curb the deadly problem?
Congressman Hakeem
Jeffries: We have a gun violence epidemic in the City of New York and across of
America as most recently brought to life again by the tragic shooting in
Oregon. America has five percent of the world’s population, but fifty percent
of the world’s guns, so half the guns that exists in this world is in the United States of
America. It is estimated that we have more than 285 million guns in circulation
throughout this country. That’s why it is important for Congress to act and to
make sure: 1.That we can do everything possible to keep guns out of the hands
of criminals, those with criminal convictions as well as those with mental
illness who are likely to do us harm. In the inner City we’ve got additional
challenges here in Brownsville and throughout East New York and throughout
communities in Brooklyn and New York City, because the guns that cause the
havoc here aren’t being sold originally or manufactured in the City of New
York, they are actually imported into the City from Southern States like North
Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, as well as the neighboring state
of Pennsylvania.
One of the things that
Congress woman Yvette Clarke and I have worked on is to try to secure funding
for the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm known as the ATF that is the Federal
Agency charged with enforcing our gun laws, and it has the responsibility to
prevent guns from being traffic from other States into New York. We recently
wrote to President Obama requesting an additional 60 million dollars for
funding in the context of this year’s budget for the ATF, so we can fully fund
the gun prevention effort. Lastly we’ve got to make sure that our young people
have other opportunities for their natural intelligence and abilities to be
brought to light so that those bad actors who would tempt them with destructive
behavior aren’t pull them into a different way of life.
Question: What role can the
Church play in helping to alleviate the problem?
Congressman Jeffries:
One of the reason why it is so important for the church to be engaged as
intimately as possible, is so that we can develop a culture of life as it
relates to respecting one another and the godliness that has been put into all
of us who has been created in God’s image. One of the problems that we have
seen in the absence of respect for life, disputes that should have been worked
out in different ways and perhaps in the past would have resulted in physical
altercation and not the taking of one’s life are handle in ways that we see
levels of violence that should concern us all. It should be noted of course,
having grown up myself here in Central Brooklyn in Crown Heights and Bedford
Styvason in the 1980 that gun violence and homicides have decline dramatically
over the last 20 or 25 years. They are still too high, because it use to be
some 2000 a year and now they are down to under 350 per year, that is still 350
too many and there is still lots of work to be done, but we need to look at how
that progress was made with investment from community leaders, clergy and
others and continue that so we can get it down to a point where not a single
life is taken in our communities.
Question: Is there a
particular message you want to send to those touting guns for the purpose of
settling disputes?
Congressman Jeffries:
Young people need to take a deep breath, pause and think before you act,
because the consequences of a bad decision on one day could last not just for a
week, a month or a year, but, can impact you for the rest of your life. So it
is important to pause, to think and to seek out an elder, and to respond to
conflict not with aggression, but in a calm and reasonable fashion that will
allow that young person to live out their life and reach their full potential.
