Morro Bay councilmember speaks out about gun violence 

Statement sent by Dawn Addis: 

– Over the last 9 days, three shootings have devastated the nation including the murder of 19 children at Robb Elementary School in Texas, the murder of 13 people in a black neighborhood grocery store in New York, and the murder of one person in a Taiwanese neighborhood church in California. Locally, people across the Central Coast want action.

Morro Bay City Councilmember Dawn Addis, who helped organize March for Our Lives in San Luis Obispo after the Parkland school shooting, and represented the Central Coast at the first-ever Presidential Forum on Gun Violence in 2019, had this to say, “My heart is with every victim and survivor who is living through the tragedy of gun violence this week. As a mom, a teacher, and an American it is impossible to be silent. These are senseless deaths that we cannot ignore. This is not the time to become numb. It is not the time to let someone else do the work. It’s up to each of us to speak up, to show up, and to make a difference. We have to create change at every level.”

On September 14, 2021, the Morro Bay City Council passed a gun safety ordinance, the only one of its kind in San Luis Obispo County. That Morro Bay ordinance is modeled after a similar one in San Francisco that stood up against Supreme Court scrutiny. Addis brought forward the gun safety discussion soon after the Virginia Beach shooting at a Public Works building where 12 people were murdered in September 2019. The Morro Bay Council had been slated to hear the original staff report in March of 2020, just after the second anniversary of the Parkland school shooting where 17 people were killed and 17 more were injured, but that was delayed due to COVID. “When I brought that forward, I knew cities might struggle to do something meaningful, but I was so tired of the inaction we all experience. Then 2020 was the most violent year on record for gun deaths,” said Addis. “Of course there were people who said ‘it can’t happen here,’ but we know mass shootings have already happened across Central Coast communities, and in some places, gun violence is a regular occurrence. These deaths are preventable and this issue is too important to give up on. We have to keep working for change.”

Dawn Addis is a Morro Bay City Councilmember and candidate for State Assembly.