SAN ANTONIO – Erika Salazar called the last month in San Antonio “scary.”
“I think people are scared to go to the mall with their kids,” Salazar said. “Things have really changed over the past couple of years.”
Friday marked the last day of National Gun Violence Awareness Month. Salazar, a trustee with the Bexar County Gun Safety Coalition, said although the month of June is officially over, the conversation of stopping gun violence in San Antonio has only started.
“It hasn’t really been addressed in a way that we can make a difference,” Salazar said. “We don’t want just words -- we want our lawmakers to actually take action through legislation.”
KSAT 12 News has been tracking how many crime calls we’ve covered across the month of June and what communities they’ve been in.
In June, our teams responded to more than 100 crime calls, and more than 40 of those calls involved guns. The recent wave of gun violence across the San Antonio area came as the Bexar County Commissioner’s Court distributed gun-safe locks and community organizations partnered to prevent violent crime in youth.
But Lawrence Romo, the Bexar County Gun Safety Coalition chairman, said more needs to be done.
“It’s getting really bad here and in other cities, so we have an epidemic,” Romo said. “What can we do in the county commissioner’s court and what can the cities do to reduce gun violence?”
The Bexar County Gun Safety Coalition is a bipartisan group working toward finding solutions to gun violence in San Antonio.
The coalition is hosting a town hall on Thursday, July 13, from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Firefighters Hall with local leaders on where the community moves forward from here.