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“Focusing on the death toll in mass shootings,” says Jennifer Longdon, a gun-control advocate from Arizona, “is like trying to tell the story of an elephant by only looking at the trunk.”
The killing of Mark Hummels is a case in point, his death every bit as tragic, senseless and poignant as that of any victim in any mass killing.
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Then there are the approximately 180 others, who are “only wounded.”
“I am ‘only’ wounded,’” says Longdon, who was shot and paralyzed in a random shooting in 2004. “(Former Congresswoman) Gabrielle Giffords is ‘only’ wounded. My fiancé, David, who suffered a devastating brain injury and is now blind, is ‘only’ wounded.”
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After a personal 62-year journey, it was a paraplegic woman named Jennifer Longdon who finally made me take my disability responsibilities seriously.
Jennifer’s story is a tough one to read and if you follow her twitter account @jenniferlongdon, it hasn’t gotten any easier in recent weeks. That twitter feed for the last three months is as mesmerizing as any novel I’ve ever read. It was a Jennifer tweet, or a series of tweets, that made me sad, angry and responsible in a blinding flash.
Let’s back up.
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She’s not supposed to be here. She coded – died – more than once when she was brought into the ER after being hit by random, senseless gunfire on Nov. 15, 2004. Her insurance company cancelled her on the spot, adding more worries on top of a spinal cord injury that kept her in the hospital for three months and then left her paralyzed. Her career – which took her around the world – was gone. Her lifetime of healthy living and being an incredible athlete seemed over. Any one of these challenges would discourage most people, but anyone who knows Jennifer Longdon knows she is anything but ordinary.
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Finding homes for thousands of Valley residents with physical challenges is on the threshold of getting easier. * * *
The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, the primary database for Valley real-estate agents, now includes 20 searchable parameters for buyers and sellers of accessible homes.
“These accessibility features can be seen as value added to a home, not as a detriment to non-disabled buyers,” said real-estate agent Michael O’Donnell
O’Donnell and fellow agent Jennifer Longdon, both of Prudential Arizona Properties, have been working for more than a year to make home buying easier for people with disabilities. They estimate that there are as many as 10,000 Arizona buyers annually with vision, hearing and mobility impairments who need homes with modifications or special features.
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