Arizona Eighth Grader Denise Bolanos’ Anti-Gun Billboard Will Put A Damper On Your New Year’s Eve Tradition

Eighth-grader Denise Bolanos created an anti-gun poster that will be featured on billboards all over her hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. Denise’s poster tackles a gun problem that we’ve found to be especially rampant in the Latino community: The custom of firing celebratory gunshots into the air to herald in the New Year. The poster reads: “Children should not have 2 worry about Bullets!” and shows a storm cloud raining down bullets on a group of playing children.

Why is that a bad thing? Maybe they were the sort of children who think its funny and cute to peek their awful misshapen little heads under the stall door while one is using a public lavatory.

Denise’s grammatically problematic poster won the second annual Shannon’s Law Stop Random Gunfire Poster Contest. Shannon Smith was just 14 when she was killed by a stray bullet someone had shot into the air. Denise believes winning this contest is the start of great things for her:

“I’m an eighth-grader at Loma Linda Elementary School. When I grow up, I want to be a governor or senator. When I heard about the contest, my teacher and the school probation officer told me that a Disneyland trip was the grand prize. At first I was hesitant to participate because I’m not an artist. Then I won.”

Why stop at senator? Maybe someday you can grow up to be a school probation officer.

Eighth-grader’s poster now a billboard [AZ Central]