Wilson Cruz begs Capitol Hill to stop the next Pulse shooting

Gay actor Wilson Cruz spoke alongside LGBTQ+ ally and actress Melissa Joan Hart at a Wednesday congressional roundtable to discuss the GOSAFE Act, a bill to prevent gun violence.

“I am a nephew and a family member devastated by gun violence. My aunt, Brenda Marquez McCool, was murdered at the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting while she placed her body between the shooter and her son, who survived. I’m also here as a citizen who’s exhausted,” Cruz said, speaking with an emotional quiver in his voice.

Related:

You can’t be pro-LGBTQ & against gun safety laws anymore

It is not allyship to stay mum on the issue of guns now that multiple LGBTQ spaces and scores of queer people lay dead over the past few years alone.

Marquez, a 49-year-old mother of 11, died after pushing her son out of the shooter’s line of fire. The June 2016 massacre in Orlando, Florida killed 49 people and injured 53 others. It also led to the creation of the group Gays Against Guns, a group that highlights the disproportionate effects of gun violence on LGBTQ+ people.

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“This bill calls for a ban on weapons that were literally created in order to end human life, to destroy human bodies,” he continued. “If we claim to be a society that values life, the very least we can do is pass this bill and save more human lives by removing these instruments of terror.”

The GOSAFE Act, introduced by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NV), would restrict access to certain semi-automatic firearms, large-capacity magazines, and machine gun conversion devices that make guns deadlier.

“The GOSAFE Act will force would-be mass shooters to reload their guns more frequently — giving people time to flee and law enforcement time to arrive on the scene – while also maintaining law enforcement access to regulated firearms, so law enforcement continues to have the tools they need to respond to a mass shooting event,” Sen. Heinrich wrote of his bill.

Hart, who is known for her roles in the TV comedies Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, told the roundtable that her entire life and political views changed after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting which killed 20 first-grade students and six adults. She lived in Fairfield County, Connecticut at the time of the shooting, though he own child attended a different school.

She also helped children flee the March 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.

“And as I reached to help the children and help them cross the road, it became clear that whatever they were running from was scarier than these cars in the street. And the fear on their faces and the terror and the confusion as we got them to safety,” Hart told the roundtable.

“Tragedy hit so close to home, and I had to stop and wonder, once again, Will we be next?” she asked. “I started wanting to make sure that that could never happen again, and in digging and educating myself on guns and gun laws across the nation, I learned that laws do change,” she said. “We are not free as long as weapons of war are allowed in the hands of untrained, unchecked citizens. We are not free if our children are forced to practice lockdown drills at school and at church. And we are not free if we have to live in fear.”

LGBTQ+ people are more than twice as likely to be victims of gun violence than their cisgender and straight peers, according to the firearm reform group Sandy Hook Promise.

GAG annually honors the victims of the Pulse shooting. While advocating for national firearm regulation reforms, GAG has also targeted businesses that have ties to the National Rifle Association (NRA), the influential gun manufacturer lobby that has largely prevented any congressional action on gun reform.

Cruz portrayed bisexual teenager Enrique Vasquez in the 1990 teen drama series My So-Called Life, one of the first recurring queer teen characters ever to appear in a primetime TV series. He has also played an openly gay character in Star Trek: Discovery.

Correction (1/29/23): A previous version of this article misattributed another person’s quote to Hart.