Elected officials are hearing heart-wrenching testimony from some of the people who have been most closely impacted by recent gun violence across the country.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee invited the families of victims of recent instances of gun violence to testify on their experiences. One of the most striking of those testimonies came from Zeneta Everhart, the mother of 21-year-old Tops supermarket employee Zaire Goodman.
Goodman is one of the survivors of the event that took the lives of 10 people in a matter of minutes. He was shot in the neck and the bullet exited his back and exploded within him. Thankfully, Goodman will physically recover from his injuries. Emotionally, however, Everhart says her son, her community, and her country need healing that only real change can bring.
Everhart explained that as the director of diveristy and inclusion at New York state Senator Tim Kennedy's office, she knows a lot about the intersection of violence and race. Still, she never imagined that her son would be among those stories, but that all changed when Zaire Goodman was shot while working at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo by an 18-year-old in a racially motivated attack.
Everhart laid out the three reasons why, based on her personal and professional experience, she feels domestic terrorism exists in the country.
"America is inherently violent," she said.
"This is who we are as a nation. The very existence of this country was founded on violence, hate and racism with the near annihilation of my native brothers and sisters. My ancestors brought to America through the slave trade were the first currency of America … My ancestors, the first currency of America, were stripped of heritage and culture, separated from their families, bargained for on auction blocks, sold, raped, and lynched."
"Yet I hear, after every mass shooting, that this isn't who we are as Americans and as a nation. Hear me clearly: this is exactly who we are," she continued.
Secondly, she pointed to education and the lack of inclusion of African American contributions noted in history textbooks. She noted that in her own experience, she didn't learn about Black history until she was a college student and chose to be educated on those matters.
"Learning about other cultures, ethnicities, and religions in schools should not be something that is up for debate. We cannot continue to whitewash education, creating generations of children to believe that one race of people are better than the other," she said.
"Our differences should make us curious, not angry. At the end of the day, I bleed, you bleed. We are all human."
Next, Everhart spoke about guns. She noted how the Buffalo shooter was gifted a shotgun from his parents on his 16th birthday. By 18, he ended up with the AR-15 that would kill so many that day.
"How, and why, and what in the world is wrong with this country?" she asked.
"Children should not be armed with weapons. Parents who provide their children with guns should be held accountable. Lawmakers who continuously allow these mass shootings to continue by not passing stricter gun laws should be voted out."
"To the lawmakers who feel that we do not need stricter gun laws, let me paint a picture for you," Everhart said.
"My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back and another on his left leg, caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15. As I clean his wounds, I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back. Shrapnel will be left inside his body for the rest of his life."
"Now I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children. This should not be your story, or mine," she said.
"You are elected because you have been chosen and are trusted to protect us. But let me say to you here today, I do not feel protected.
"No citizen needs an AR-15. These weapons are designed to do the most harm in the least amount of time. And on Saturday, May 14, it took a domestic terrorist just two minutes to shoot and kill 10 people and injure three others."
"If after hearing from me and the other people testifying here today does not move you to act on gun laws, I invite you to my home to help me clean Xavier's wounds, so that you may see up close the damage that has been caused to my son and to my community," Everhart poignantly added.
She went on to vow to keep the memories of those killed that day alive and to fight alongside her son to bring change so that their deaths were not in vain.
