Pop Star Brings Anti-Gun Drive to Hamilton High

The rally had all the energy of a rock concert, with thousands of teenagers screaming and chanting Wednesday at Hamilton High in West Los Angeles. But behind the noise was a message: ending gun violence.

About 2,000 students crowded into the gym to hear double platinum R&B; artist Michael “D’Angelo” Archer, who was kicking off a national initiative. The singer is using his upcoming summer tour to bring attention to the Youth Petition to End Gun Violence, a campaign created by PAX, an anti-gun violence organization.

The initiative seeks to collect a million signatures by Nov. 7 and calls for so-called “common-sense solutions” to ending gun violence, such as stricter gun controls and the “elimination of assault weapons and other weapons of war.”

Hamilton High’s own campus club dedicated to curbing gun violence--Students for Peace--received a $2,000 donation from PAX and Levi’s, the sponsors of D’Angelo’s tour, for its leadership on the issue.

“It’s up to young people to say: ‘Enough is enough. We’re not going to tolerate it anymore,’ ” said PAX co-founder Daniel Gross, who presented the check.

The PAX initiative aims to create 25 student chapters nationwide by the end of the year. Hamilton High became the first high school in the country to open an official PAX chapter Wednesday.

Every year, 33,000 Americans die from gun violence, said Gross, whose younger brother was killed in the 1997 Empire State Building shooting. “That’s twice as many who die from AIDS. Gun violence is a health epidemic,” he said.

Another speaker and victim of the epidemic, Columbine High sophomore Devon Adams, told the Hamilton students that she hopes to spare other teenagers the agony of visiting a best friend’s grave the day after the prom to deliver a corsage, as she did.

The gymnasium rocked with shouts of support.

Many in the audience remembered Hamilton High student Christopher Wallace, 16, who died last year when he scratched the back of his head with a gun and it fired accidentally.

“This year, people are wondering who else is going to die,” said senior class president Keisha McCauley. “We shouldn’t assume that someone is going to die.”