No mother should suffer like this. NC gun laws must change.
Years have passed, but I can still put myself back in that moment. The 3 a.m. call, the panic in my son’s voice, the rush to the hospital. I can still hear echoes of the nurse suggesting we speak to the chaplain. I can still feel my heart stop.
The years will pass but I won’t forget that never-ending night, the string of moments that changed my life forever.
My son Ahmad was shot and killed in Greensboro in October 2016, taken from me by a bullet that wasn’t intended for him, by a shooter he didn’t know. My son, the gentle giant. My son, who was thoughtful and resilient. My son, who I always said was too good to be true.
I used to tell people that if teachers could have a classroom full of Ahmads, they would. He was so sweet and so kind that you couldn’t help but love him. He had a speech impediment as well as a learning disability in reading, and because of these struggles, he needed extra time to complete his work. But he studied hard and overcame it, graduating from high school on the honor roll and going on to study at North Carolina A&T University. He was smart and dedicated. I never underestimated what he could achieve.
I used to ask Ahmad why he played so much ball. He would practice and practice, but his coaches never put him in. He didn’t see a minute of game time — not on the field, or on the court — but still, he practiced. Other kids would’ve given up, but not Ahmad. That wasn’t who he was. He was determined and humble, but more than that, he just loved to play, even if he never left the bench. I treasured that about him.
Ahmad’s death shook me to my core. His loss reverberated through our family and our community, too. The night he was shot and killed, his two little cousins had been visiting the house, hoping he might come home for the weekend. Ahmad had a habit of coming back from school just to play video games with them. But not that night. That night, Ahmad went to an off-campus party and never came home again. That night, our family lost a son, a brother, a nephew, and so much more.
His cousins were too young to fully comprehend what was happening at the time, but in a way, I think they understood Ahmad wasn’t coming back.
After Ahmad died, I couldn’t bear to let another mother feel the pain of having a child taken by gun violence — a pain that I continue to shoulder every single day. I joined Moms Demand Action to fight for better gun laws, to help protect others the way I wish someone had protected my son. I’ve devoted all of my free time to the gun violence prevention movement because I can envision a future better than our current reality.
Gun violence is an epidemic that continues to plague communities across North Carolina. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
While I’ve seen progress that encourages me to keep pushing — like when in August, Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed legislation that would have repealed North Carolina’s background check requirement for unlicensed handgun sales — there are still key improvements to be made to our state’s gun laws.
For example, North Carolina could expand our permit requirement to apply to all gun sales, not just handgun sales. We can also expand our domestic violence laws to prohibit people from possessing firearms who have been convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence. State lawmakers could pass an Extreme Risk Law, which would empower loved ones or law enforcement to intervene in order to temporarily prevent those in crisis from accessing firearms.
It’s an uphill battle, but volunteers like me will continue to lead this fight at every level, and we welcome everyone to join us. I made a vow to be Ahmad’s voice forever, and I’ll keep telling our story until I see the change that this country so desperately needs.