Seven siblings and their cousin are dead. The youngest was three years old. The oldest was eleven. They were shot and killed by their father and uncle in Shreveport, Louisiana on Sunday. Their names deserve to be remembered. Their deaths deserve to mean something. And the legal loophole that put a gun back in the hands of the man who killed them deserves to be closed permanently.

Shamar Elkins had a criminal record involving weapons. In 2019, he was arrested for firing a 9-millimeter handgun 300 feet from the fence line of a school where children were playing outside. He was charged with illegal use of weapons and carrying a firearm on school property. He pleaded guilty to the weapons charge. The more serious charge was dismissed. He received probation. He received no permanent firearms ban. When his probation ended, he was legally allowed to own a gun again.

This is not a gap in the system. It is a choice the system made. Louisiana's 10-year firearms ban covers crimes of violence, sex crimes, and drug crimes, but not all felonies. Elkins's conviction fell below that threshold. Federal law permanently bans firearms only for convictions resulting in more than one year of imprisonment. Probation does not meet that threshold. So a man who was convicted of firing a weapon near a school full of children was handed back his gun rights when his probation ended, and eight children are now dead because of it.

There is no universe in which firing a weapon 300 feet from a school fence while children are playing outside should result in the restoration of gun rights. There is no policy rationale, no legal principle, and no version of responsible governance that leads to that outcome. The law as written treats that conviction as insufficiently serious to warrant permanent consequences. Eight children between the ages of three and eleven are the evidence that the law is wrong.

The fix is not complicated. Any felony conviction involving the illegal use of a firearm in proximity to children should result in a permanent firearms ban. Any probation-only weapons conviction should disqualify a person from legally owning a firearm. Louisiana should expand its 10-year ban to cover all felony weapons convictions. Congress should lower the federal threshold so that weapons convictions resulting in probation are treated with the seriousness they deserve.

These children cannot speak. They cannot demand the change that might have saved them. Their parents, their community, and the people across this country who are watching cannot look away and pretend the system did not fail them. It failed them completely. It failed them at every level. And the least we can do for them now is make sure it does not fail the next family the same way.

Sign this petition to demand Louisiana expand its firearms ban to cover all felony weapons convictions, call on Congress to lower the federal threshold so that probation-only weapons convictions result in permanent firearms bans, and honor the eight children killed in Shreveport by closing the legal loopholes that rearmed their killer.