Somers Point pulls 2nd Amendment resolution

Measure removed from agenda two days after Texas school massacre

SOMERS POINT — Two days after teen gunman Salvador Ramos killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, City Council pulled a resolution from the agenda that expressed “opposition to any legislation that unconstitutionally infringes up an individual’s Second Amendment rights.”

The Second Amendment, of course, protects Americans’ right to bear arms. Written a couple of centuries ago, its most extreme advocates see it as a sweeping carte blanche to own, stockpile and use deadly weapons at will.

City Council President Janice Johnston, who said at the beginning of the meeting May 26 that the resolution would be removed from the agenda, said three days later that she “pulled it for multiple reasons and doesn’t feel it needs any more discussion.”

Asked if the resolution would appear on a future agenda, she said she doesn’t have a crystal ball.

“It’s not only up to me … I can’t say what’s going to happen in the future,” she said, declining to answer whether she would vote for it if it did.

Whether the action was prompted by the grade school slaughter two days earlier was unclear, but the mass shooting May 13 at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., in which 10 were killed and three injured, did not stop it from being added to the agenda at the urging of an Absecon resident and her Garden State 2A Grass Roots Organization. Nor did the near-daily lethal shooting across the nation or the opposition by multiple people at the meeting May 12.

Ramos, 18, first shot his grandmother at their home and then fled in her truck, which he crashed near the school, according to published reports. Ramos then ran into the school and killed 19 children and two teachers before barricading himself in a fourth-grade classroom. Officers eventually broke in and killed shot him dead, adding another gun death to the total. Ramos also wounded 17 others, including two police officers. It was at least the 30th school shooting so far this year, according to a CNN analysis.

Neither the shootings nor the opposition stopped Sandy Hickerson from attending the meeting May 26. She has been traveling the county for several years convincing most municipalities to adopt a resolution opposing any threats to the Second Amendment, and 20-plus more deaths wasn’t going to stop her advocacy.

The Absecon woman has been a regular in Linwood for the past couple of months and used the public comment portion of the meeting May 12 in Somers Point to ask for a resolution stating opposition to any laws that would infringe on the rights of Americans to lawfully own guns.

Hickerson said she felt no shame in advocating for gun rights so soon after another deadly shooting by a lawful gun owner.

“I feel that our children are worth protecting,” she said after the meeting. “I don’t support mental illness, I don’t support people with mental illness owning guns.”

Ramos had no history of mental illness when he legally bought two AR-15-style rifles and ammunition after his recent birthday.

“This is about Somers Point. You can’t compare the two, there are different laws in Texas and New Jersey. My heart breaks for those families. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy.”

She said it was not a projectile fired from the gun that killed the students but “the person that pulled the trigger. A gun just sitting in the corner or sitting on the table isn’t going to kill anyone. You’re misconstruing this.”

By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff