Public Safety

'People for a Safe Community' Calls For Stricter Federal Gun Laws

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published March 1, 2013 at 12:22 PM PST

This story was published more than 11 years ago.

A group called “People for a Safe Community” is planning a community event Saturday to call for more stringent gun laws at the federal level.

Rick McCoy’s 17-year-old son was shot dead as he left school last year. McCoy will be a speaker at the event.

"You can’t just sit at home and think, 'Oh yeah, that happened to him and I feel sorry, but it would never happen to me.' It’s happening to everyone, and you know if we as people do nothing about it, it will never be stopped," he said. "It’s going to just get worse. No one organization can do it by itself, we've got to all pull together, that’s the only way it's going to happen."

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Matt Maggio, one of the founders of the group, said without federal legislation, California's stricter laws are ineffective.

"We've seen over and over again," he said, "you can just go to a different state and buy as many guns as will fit in your car and bring them back to California."

Other speakers at the meeting will include San Diego Mayor Bob Filner and representatives from Senator Diane Fienstien's and Congressman Scott Peter's offices.

The meeting at the First Unitarian Church at 4190 Front Street in Hillcrest runs from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

Corrected: December 22, 2024 at 3:07 PM PST

This story originally stated the wrong location for the meeting. The location is Hillcrest.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.