SAN ANTONIO — More than a hundred people marched from St. Michael's Catholic Church to the Alamodome on Saturday to hang around 2000 t-shirts in front of the parking lot.
Each shirt represented a life lost to gun violence in Bexar County. Most shirts had a name, age, and date of death but there were also shirts that simply said "another life stolen." Those represented suicide victims.
Texas Impact Human Rights Fellow Bobby Watson told KENS 5 there have been 2,800 gun related deaths in Bexar County since 2018. The shirts became an art instillation in the Alamodome parking lot to give people an idea of how many lives have been lost.
"It localizes, and makes visible, gun violence for communities. We get t-shirts that show the name of every victim from this county, Bexar County," Watson said. " Here at the Alamodome we are showing 2000 of those names. It's in our communities right now."
Texas Impact works to connect churches, advocates, and educators for action on key issues in a community. Watson said Texas Impact is also working in Houston, Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth. He hopes to see additional installations in those cities and Watson said all the shirts displayed would eventually make their way to the Texas capital in 2025.
"...so that we can advocate and get legislative change there so that people in power at the capital can see the cost of gun violence in our communities when we don't do anything," Watson said.
Reverend Robert Mueller from Devine Redeemer Presbyterian, who also partners with Texas Impact, said he has already seen too much gun violence in his community and wants state legislators to get more involved in solutions. Mueller said he knows many people in his congregation that have dealt with gun violence and he has even seen it personally.
"(It was) 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning. Across the street from us we started to hear shots. We looked up and we watched one young man empty a 9mm handgun into the back of another young man and leave him dead on the front porch of the house across from our church," Mueller said. "That kind of violence is unacceptable in our community."
Mueller said he didn't want to take guns away from people but he wanted gun owners to be responsible so those guns aren't stolen or used in crimes. He said the COPS/Metro Alliance, a nonprofit, is working with the City of San Antonio to spend $200,000 on handgun safes to secure guns in either a home or a vehicle. Those safes could be offered to the public for free.
"Our hope is that we could get thousands of handguns in the city more safely stored so that they will not cause injury to anyone," Mueller said.
The event also supported the gun exchange program, led by Councilman John Courage, which will happen at the Alamodome on Sunday, November 19th.
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