Citizen of the Week - Natalie Breuel, Penn Against Gun Violence

Citizen of the Week: Natalie Breuel

A Penn educatee—and gun user—fights for an end to gun violence

Jan. 12, 2016

Natalie Breuel grew upwards going to the shooting range with her father in Briarcliff Estate, New York. She knows how to burn down a gun, how to properly clean and handle ane. She enjoys it.

A freshman at Penn, Breuel is also the founder of  Penn Confronting Gun Violence, a educatee advocacy group which has garnered national attention in the last couple months. A gun user advocating for more than gun control? To Breuel, information technology'due south not a contradiction; information technology's common sense.

"Everyone sees us and thinks 'Oh, they're trying to take our guns away,' but that'due south not true," Breuel says. "Owning a gun is a responsibility and information technology's non a responsibility that everyone can handle."

Since October, Penn Against Gun Violence has congregated 30 students for a two-pronged approach to creating change in the level of gun violence in Philadelphia: awareness and advancement. Among the group's bug are closing loopholes in the 1994 Brady Bill that have immune some gun sales to thwart background checks. Pres. Obama's executive order last week addressed this by calling for universal background checks and for strengthening the relationship between mental health agencies and government. Still, the upshot isn't going anywhere. (In Dec, afterwards Pres. Obama called for a restriction on attack weapons, gun sales striking a 2-decade high .)

"Everyone sees us and thinks 'Oh, they're trying to accept our guns abroad,' but that'southward not true," Breuel says. "Owning a gun is a responsibleness and information technology's not a responsibility that everyone can handle."

Breuel's group has also been working with grassroots organizations and survivor networks in Philadelphia to lobby for state legislation that would let the city to enact stronger gun laws . This leap, Penn Against Gun Violence plans to collaborate with other Penn student groups and student groups from Drexel and Temple on diverse initiatives, including a march to finish gun violence in Philadelphia.

Brueul started Penn Against Gun Violence afterward a threat against Philadelphia-expanse universities  posted online on Oct 4th forced the criminology major and many other Philly students to choose between their education and their safety. Waiting out the threat in her dorm room, Breuel realized  she no longer could shut herself off from the gun violence that faces Philadelphia and the nation.

"I was just sitting in my room thinking, I'1000 at this astonishing schoolhouse and I'm not in class right now and that's such a problem," Breuel says. "There should be zip stopping me from getting my education and I shouldn't have to choose betwixt condom and pedagogy. A lot of people in Philadelphia practise that every day."

Until October, Breuel had spent years avoiding the realities of gun violence. A sophomore in high school in 2012, she lived an hour away from Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 showtime-graders were shot and killed in their classroom that December. She recalls getting off her schoolhouse bus, and reading the news from Sandy Hook Simple. "I saw the faces of the children and completely bankrupt downwardly," Breuel says. "I went upward to my room, cried myself to sleep and thought this was the worst affair ever."

Afterwards, Breuel says, she stopped paying attending to the mass shootings that followed i afterwards some other. "I call back a lot of people do that," she says. "It hurts as well much to care about what'southward happening. People don't want to see the faces of the kids. Simply you have to."

Merely the Oct threat on Philadelphia universities—which followed the shooting expiry of nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon—forced Breuel to feel the terror that comes along with gun violence. "This is so much more real than it ever was to me. I've been ignoring information technology for way too long," Breuel says.

Breuel knows it volition take more than a march through town—or a gathering of college students—to actually make a dent in the prevalence of gun violence around her. Simply she is part of a larger movement, from the President to presidential nominees to a growing number of activist groups that are increasingly demanding changes in the way we approach guns in this land.

"I was just sitting in my room thinking, I'm at this amazing schoolhouse and I'grand not in class right now and that's such a trouble," Breuel says. "There should be nothing stopping me from getting my educational activity and I shouldn't have to choose between safety and education. A lot of people in Philadelphia do that every day."

Susan Sorenson, a Penn professor who has done extensive enquiry into the prevention of violence, says all types of advocacy are needed for real progress on this upshot.

"At that place are different domains that are needed to move an issue on the policy agenda," says Sorenson, a faculty advisor to Breuel's group "One of those is scientific research , which is what I practice; another is personal experience, with survivors,"And then there's what the population of the country itself wants and people organizing together to affect change—and that's where Penn Against Gun Violence comes in."

Breuel has ever wanted to have a public service career. She is currently a volunteer firefighter in her hometown, for which she  had to undergo active shooter training. She also is a tutor at Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center, through the Petey Greene prisoner assistance program and attends weekly bible written report.

As a student, a volunteer and a gun user, Breuel has seen both sides of the gun control issue. That, she says, has led her to her position: That owning a gun is equal to the responsibility of driving a motorcar. People must larn a license to drive a car, go through unlike checks to insure they are able to safely operate the vehicle, acquire insurance before they can go out on the streets. Those same checks should be in that location for guns. That is something she thinks the country is ready for.

"We are reaching a tipping indicate," Breuel said. "People intendance nearly gun violence."

Ed. notation: A previous version of this story said that Breuel owned a gun and had shot a deer. She has only used a family fellow member's gun at a shooting range.

Header photo via Natalie Breuel

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/citizen-week-natalie-breuel-penn-against-gun-violence/

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