A local community action group honored victims of gun violence and showed support for updating gun laws Sunday afternoon by placing flags at a St. Charles Street residence in Jasper.
One Dubois County a group of community action-oriented individuals met yesterday in front of the home of Doug and Nancy Habig where they and other participants placed thousands of colored flags to represent lives lost in both mass shootings and gun deaths in recent years.
Nearly 700 orange flags represented lives lost in mass shootings since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.
The orange flags were arranged in the shape of a heart as each flag represented one life and featured a victims’ name and age.
2400 white flags each representing 25 gun deaths were also placed around the orange flag heart representing deaths in the US since the 2014 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, totaling nearly 60,000 deaths since 2014.
One-DC used information from the Washington Post and the website www.gunviolencearchive.org to determine the number of deaths.
Nancy Habig, a former member and past president of the Greater Jasper Consolidated School Board and a member of One-Dubois County, said that the inspiration from the children who suffered from the Parkland Florida shooting coming together brought this to fruition.
Another patron at the flag ceremony was Dennis Tedrow, who says it’s great that a community can come together to stand up for something they believe in.
In addition to flag placement, One-DC also collected signatures to send to U.S. Congressman Larry Bucshon and Indiana senators Todd Young and Joe Donnelly asking them to support gun law reform that includes background checks, keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, supporting gun safety technology as well as laws that require safe storage of firearms to prevent accidental child gun deaths.
