Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) has condemned the “gun violence and injustice” evidenced in the shooting of a Kansas City, Missouri, teenager who went to the wrong house last week to pick up his brother.
“As someone still recovering from a gunshot to the head, I am saddened and angry that Ralph Yarl is now facing recovery,” Giffords tweeted Monday. “At 16 years old. For just ringing the doorbell. We cannot continue to be a country defined by gun violence and injustice.
Ralph Yarl, a Black junior high school student, was shot in the head and arm Friday night after ringing the front doorbell in Kansas City. According to his family, he mistakenly arrived at the address he thought was the house where he wanted to pick up his siblings.
Andrew Lester, an 85-year-old white man, has been charged with two felonies in the shooting: assault in the first degree and armed criminal action.
Lester allegedly fired a .32 caliber revolver through the glass of the front door, hitting Yarl in the head. According to Clay County Prosecutor Zachary Thompson, Yarl never entered the home and the two did not exchange words when Lester opened fire.
Thompson said he believed there was “a racist component” in the shooting.
In 2011, Giffords was shot in the head when a gunman opened fire at an event held at a grocery store in Tucson. Six people were killed, and 12 others were injured. He suffered a brain injury and underwent intensive speech and physical therapy. He resigned from Congress and became a vocal advocate for gun safety.
An organization founded to fight gun violence, named Giffords, also tweeted about Yarl’s shooting, write: “This is the culture of edge guns at work. It is built on a false, and often racist, basis that it is ok to shoot first and ask questions later. And it must stop.
Missouri has a controversial “stand your ground” law that makes it legal for a person to use physical force “until he believes that such force is necessary to defend himself” from what he believes is the use or unlawful use of force by another person.”
The law has been heavily criticized by anti-gun violence groups. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, for example, says that “stand your ground” laws disproportionately harm black people and “perpetuate the brutalization of black lives for decades while protecting and promoting unjustified and unjustified violence in America.” “
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said the law, which was adopted in Missouri in 2016, should not apply in this case, according to The New York Times.
“If Stand Your Ground really allows people to shoot people who ring the doorbell,” he said, “that makes the life of every postal worker, every campaigner, every Amazon delivery person in this country.”