John–
Growing up, my mom and I always had to think about being Black before we thought about anything else. It was Charleston in the 60s—home to segregation, Jim Crow laws, and us. My mother Ethel Lee Lance and I got followed, questioned, and turned away from places, just like everyone else who looked like us. The racism was baked into the very bones of our city: a continuous hurt, a soul-deep weariness, that came from being told at every turn that our Black lives didn't matter.
Five years ago today, the racism that had followed us for our whole lives caught up to my mom: a white man filled with hate and armed with a gun murdered her and eight other Black people, including two of my cousins and one childhood friend, while they prayed in Charleston's Mother Emanuel Church.
It was the same church where my mom first saw me preach, sitting in the front row and saying, "Amen, that's my baby."
But the shooter who ended my mother's life should not have been able to purchase a gun in the first place. He was prohibited from buying a gun and should have been stopped in his tracks by the background check he couldn't pass. But because of an NRA-backed loophole that allows a gun sale to go forward when a background check takes longer than three business days, he was able to buy one anyway. The rest is tragic history, and the loophole is now named the "Charleston loophole" after my hometown.
John, on the 5-year mark of my mother's death, join me as a member of Moms Demand Action to fight for common-sense gun safety legislation like the bill that addresses the Charleston loophole.
Like so many of the problems that kill Black people in America, the Charleston loophole has gone unaddressed—even as the other victims' families and I have continually called out for action. This inaction continues even though the loophole has likely become deadlier during the pandemic; a surge in gun sales has overwhelmed our background check system and made it likelier than ever that background checks will take longer than three business days. Each of those instances is a gun that could end up in the hands of someone like the man who killed my mom.
Join me as a Moms Demand Action volunteer and be a part of the fight to end gun violence and take on the NRA's deadly agenda.
In recent weeks and months, I've been thinking a lot about my mom, my cousins, my friends, and the others that were killed five years ago today. Because their lives, and their deaths, are not so different from those of George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks, and so many others whose murders were enabled by systemic racism and hate in our country. Nor are they that different from the tens of thousands of Black people in America who have been killed by COVID-19, a virus that kills us at disproportionate rates because of that same systemic racism.
John, that's why I write today: to keep my mom's memory alive on the 5-year mark of her death, to keep pushing forward like she always did, and to do my part to disarm hate while protestors across the country march to stamp it out. Day by day, protest by protest, we can bring about an awakening—on the Charleston loophole and so many other issues that Black people in America have faced for centuries.
All I can hope for is that some of you will join me in this fight, and that my mom is looking down on me now, saying what she said that first time she saw me preach: "Amen, that's my baby."
Thank you for fighting with me,
Rev. Sharon Risher, MDiv.
Everytown Survivor Network
P.S. If you are a survivor of gun violence or have a loved one who has been wounded or killed by gun violence, you can share your story on Moments That Survive with the stories of other survivors of gun violence.
