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RED BANK: MOMS FLOCK TO GUN LAW EVENT

Amy Downey offered cookies prior to the start of a Moms Demand Action orientation meeting that drew a full house to Shapiro’s Tuesday night. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)

By JOHN T. WARD

The murders of 17 people by a gunman in Florida last week prompted a hasty new-member orientation in Red Bank Tuesday night for an organization dedicated to what it calls “common sense gun laws.”

Volunteers with Moms Demand Action said the February 14 slaughter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland has unleashed a surge of interest unseen since the group’s founding five years ago in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut murders of 27 children and adults.

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SEA BRIGHT PLAYGROUND TAKES SHAPE

The playground-to-be at Sea Bright’s municipal beach. (Photo by Wil Fulton. Click to enlarge)

By WIL FULTON

The Sandy Ground Project Memorial Playground in Sea Bright, built to honor and pay tribute to the victims of the horrific Newtown School shootings, has broken ground, but is still more than a month away from being completed, according to borough Recreation Director Kathy Morris.

The Foundation to Save the Jersey Shore and the New Jersey Firemen’s Mutual Benevolent Association are spearheading a project called “The Sandy Ground Project: Where Angels Play” that aims to create 26 memorial playgrounds across the state, dedicated to those who lost their lives in the December school slaughter. Sea Bright is the first town to receive a memorial playground, this one dedicated to Ann Marie Murphy, a special education teacher who lost her life in the shooting.

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