For the third year since the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, MA, 26 cyclists—26 representing the 20 children and six educators killed by the single gunman—arrived at City Hall on their way to Washington, D.C. Baltimore Mayor’s Office staff photographer Mark Dennis, pictured above in the BALTIMORE jersey, led the group downtown from the city line near Rosedale.
The annual Sandy Hook Ride on Washington and Team 26 members are making 14 stops altogether, from Harlem and the Bronx in New York City to single-traffic light towns to build support for gun violence prevention. The team consists of top amateur and masters cyclists from the region as well as four riders who live in Newtown, including ride leader Monte Frank and Dr. Bill Begg, the local emergency room doctor on call the day of the mass shooting. Two riders have children who went to the Sandy Hook Elementary School and two other riders lost a family member in the Virginia Tech shooting.
The cyclists left Newtown Saturday morning for Capitol Hill, where they’ll arrive Tuesday, intending to remind legislators about the Dec. 14, 2014 tragedy and push for stricter gun safety laws, including mandatory background checks for all gun sales, a ban on high-capacity magazines, penalties for so-called “straw” buyers, and restrictions on firearms when a restraining order is issued in domestic violence cases.
As part of their effort, Team 26 partners with community leaders and organizations, elected officials and grassroots and national gun violence prevention groups. At City Hall, the cyclists rallied with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, and gun control advocates, including Vinny DeMarco, president of Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence. Rawlings-Blake noted that gun violence has long plagued Baltimore, adding that nearly every family, including hers, has been touched either directly or indirectly from gun violence.
DeMarco highlighted a significant drop in gun deaths in the state last year as Frosh remarked that Maryland was one of the few states to enact meaningful gun reform with the passage of the Maryland Firearm Safety of 2013 following the Sandy Hook school massacre.
“What I learned that day as a doctor is that gun shot victims either die, become permanently disabled, or live with the psychological trauma of being shot for the rest of their lives,” Begg says. “The only way to make a difference is prevention.”
