Christina Gill, a Santa Fe Moms Demand Action member, stands in front of a mural commemorating gun violence victims outside a Bernalillo County public charter school.
Christina Gill says life goes on after losing someone to gun violence, but the pain remains, and her experience with joy is different.
Gill lost her 39-year-old son, Joseph Aieloo, on October 4, 2021, when Jay Wagers, 29, shot him in the Santa Fe neighborhood where he grew up.
Gill, a Moms Demand Action member, said she still lives in the same neighborhood because her son was such a dynamic person. “There’s no place I can go in Santa Fe that I’m not reminded of his presence.”
Gill spoke on Wednesday morning at an event hosted by New Mexico Democrat U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich’s office outside of Robert F. Kennedy Charter School’s middle school campus, just outside Albuquerque’s city limits and near the South Valley. They were joined by students from the middle school, Students Demand Action, and ACE Leadership High School.
A week earlier, Heinrich reintroduced two pieces of gun violence legislation in Congress: the GOSAFE Act, which would regulate the sale, transfer, and manufacture of gas-operated semi-automatic firearms; and the BUMP Act, which would prohibit the sale of “bump stocks” and other devices or modifications that convert semi-automatic firearms into fully automatic ones.
“It is not only our right but our duty to advocate for gun safety laws,” Gill told the crowd. “I ask you to stand with me today in urging our legislators to pass GOSAFE, to protect our communities and children from the tragedy of gun violence, to protect not just the rights of those who champion the Second Amendment, but to acknowledge their duty as elected officials to pass legislation that protects the equal rights of all of their constituents, especially children, to feel safe in our communities.”
Heinrich stated on Wednesday that the previous assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, prohibited items that were “purely cosmetic,” whereas the true deadliness of some firearms stems from the mechanisms used to quickly load a new round after firing the first.
“It won’t change things overnight but it would move us on a trajectory where there would be far fewer of these weapons of war on the streets over time,” he told CNN.
According to Gill, Heinrich’s legislation targets specific and particularly lethal gas-operated semi-automatic firearms, leaving many options for people to purchase other types of guns to hunt, compete, or protect their families.
According to Heinrich, the legislation would require that if a firearm is gas-operated, which means it uses the gas expended by the first fired round to quickly cycle the firing mechanism and load the next one, it have a non-detachable magazine that only holds 10 rounds.
“We know time and time again that the moment that these mass shootings actually come to an end is when the shooter has to stop, take stock and get reloaded without being able to just slide another high-capacity magazine in,” Heinrich told reporters.
Ken Jones, a hunter and firearms owner, believes that large magazines are unnecessary for target practice or self-defense.
“To solve the gun crisis in our country today, in my opinion …we need to have better access to mental health care, we need strong red flag laws and yes, we need to keep the most violent criminals off our streets and out of our communities,” Jones told the crowd.
Everytown for Gun Safety’s senior vice president of corporate affairs, Monicia Henley, said Heinrich’s bill will prevent more mass shootings, and she urged his congressional colleagues and New Mexico state lawmakers to support it.
“This isn’t about taking away our rights, it’s about saving lives,” Henley told the audience. “We need to make a special session happen in Santa Fe, and focus on preventative measures that will save lives.”
Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, stated that Heinrich’s legislation is “the first critical steps to remove weapons of war from our civilian population, weapons that should never have been available to any of us in the first place.”
‘My life will be different.’
Gill spoke on Wednesday about the other people injured in the shooting that killed her son, as well as the people who have had to live without him.
She said he volunteered for the tenant advocacy group Chainbreaker Collective.
“He helped people get off the street,” she told me. “He cared deeply about marginalized people. As a result of this loss, I am much more empathetic and compassionate, and I understand why he cared so much about people who were struggling.”
Gill claimed Wagers “went on a rampage,” shooting another random victim in the eye, causing permanent brain damage, injuring another with shattered glass, and traumatizing two more people by narrowly missing them with bullets.
Wagers ultimately pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Aieloo’s shooting death, as well as attempted first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and shooting from a vehicle in the same incident. A state district court judge sentenced him to thirty years in prison.
Gill read from 15-year-old Landon Garcia’s victim impact statement in this case.
“Joey was, and still is, a very important person in my life,” Garcia recalled. “I burst into tears the night I found out he had died. I cried a lot. He was a friend and role model for me. “If this man had not murdered him, my life would have been different.”
Gill told reporters that it is her responsibility to do anything to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring again.
“I stand here for my son, all the Landons and community members, families and friends whose lives would be different if not for the devastation of gun violence,” Gill told the crowd. “We’re always going to have conflict, but it doesn’t mean we have to have violence.”
