‘More funerals than weddings’: Chicago man tells Senate about trauma of gun violence
CHICAGO — When Ernest Willingham walked up Capitol Hill, he was shrouded in memories of bullets. How could he not be, with a childhood spent cautiously inside, after family members — a father, a brother, a cousin — all shot. With the memory of Jahnae, his best friend killed by a gunman when she was 17. Willingham, 19, shared those too-frequent tragedies from growing up in Chicago when he ...
CHICAGO — When Ernest Willingham walked up Capitol Hill, he was shrouded in memories of bullets.
How could he not be, with a childhood spent cautiously inside, after family members — a father, a brother, a cousin — all shot. With the memory of Jahnae, his best friend killed by a gunman when she was 17.
Willingham, 19, shared those too-frequent tragedies from growing up in Chicago when he testified last Wednesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence and children. He sought to walk senators through “what it is like to make life decisions when the fear of gun violence or of getting shot weighs heavily on your mind.”
For Willingham, the specter of gun violence feels like a
