A racist shooter didn’t destroy El Paso. It has strengthened our fight for gun reform.

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I have always thought of Borderland as a haven of peace that I would never want to leave. El Paso is warm and welcoming, we embrace our cultures and we are beautiful and safe for it. This is why I went to college at UT-El Paso and why I raised four children here.

Two years ago, when a racist drove over 600 miles to our town and opened fire, killing 23 people and injuring 23 others, I knew we wouldn’t let him define our town oasis by his hatred.

I was in Washington, DC that day, surrounded by thousands of fellow gun safety advocates at our annual training conference. It took me a long time to make the trip – I had struggled with depression and anxiety, and letting my kids take a four day trip to a city I had never been to was in itself a challenge. . But when I saw someone post on Facebook that there was an active shooter at Walmart near the Cielo Vista mall, that anxiety kicked into high gear.

I called my grandparents – they were safe, thank goodness, but close. My grandfather went to Walmart earlier that day; he parked where the first victim was found. My brother’s birthday is August 3; instead of partying with the family, he went to drop off food and water at one of the impromptu blood drives that arose immediately after the shooting.

As we learned more about the shooter and his hateful ideology, one thing became very clear, very quickly: he was not an El Pasoan. He came to our town, driven by vile rhetoric adopted at the highest levels of government and armed by the courtesy of weak gun laws, to target everything we cherish about El Paso. He targeted people who look like me because our leaders told him, through their words and actions, that it was OK to do it.

And he is not alone. This kind of dangerous and hateful rhetoric – rhetoric that the gun lobby has trafficked for years – prompted thousands of insurgents to storm the United States Capitol in January. He promoted an almost 150% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in America’s 16 largest cities in 2020. He encouraged Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters to continue spreading a deadly white supremacist trio , anti-government extremism and armed radicalism. And after this legislative session, where our lawmakers sided with the NRA and ignored law enforcement, religious leaders, advocates like me and over 80% of Texans in their fanatical quest for unlicensed porterage , the danger of gun hatred in Texas continues to grow. .

But while he may not be alone, neither are we. After learning of the mass shooting, we walked from our training conference to the White House to demand action. Since then, our movement of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers has grown exponentially. .

The shooter couldn’t figure out what makes our city special, so he tried to destroy it.

We did not let him do it.

As we honor the victims and survivors two years later, we reaffirm our values ​​of kindness and compassion. Throughout this month, you’ll see El Pasoans, run by the Paso del Norte Community Foundation, sharing their random acts of kindness on social media using the hashtag #ElPasoKind. Last weekend, we commemorated the lives stolen from us in a virtual commemoration. We joined the Human Rights Frontier Network for a commemorative march and community celebration, continuing to reject the racism and hatred that have tried and failed to poison our community. And we will come together to fight the gun violence that plagues our city but is too often ignored.

El Paso will not be defined by the actions of a white supremacist. We won’t let him tell us who we are.

We are and always will be #ElPasoStrong.

Luevanos volunteers for the Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action. She has lived in El Paso all of her life.

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