Quavo hosts an anti-gun violence summit with VP Kamala Harris on late nephew Takeoff’s birthday

By Lisa Respers France and Ebony Davis, CNN

(CNN) — Quavo doesn’t want his late nephew and fellow Migos member Takeoff’s gun-related death to have been in vain.

On Tuesday, which would have been Takeoff’s 30th birthday, Quavo co-hosted the firstRocket Foundation Summit in collaboration with US Vice President Kamala Harris and the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

At the event, Quavo told reporters he’s been working to make sure he “turned tragedy into triumph.”

Takeoff was shot and killed during a private party in Houston, Texas, in 2022. He was 28.

“My nephew is a legend. He died for a cause and right now we gonna change the world for him,” Quavo said this week.

Quavo and Takeoff were part of the rap trio Migos along with fellow rapper and relative Offset. Quavo said he felt “overwhelmed” on Tuesday, but is committed to helping to reduce gun violence.

Part of his goal, he said, is “just to change lives, change our community.”

“We gotta start here in Atlanta,” he said. “We gotta start here with the culture and making sure we have money for resources.”

That initiative includes handing out $20,000 grants to several organizations who are also on the mission to stop gun violence.

“We have more work to do, but good work is happening and let’s not let anybody make us think that we cannot make a difference,” Harris said at the summit this week. “It’s never-ending in some ways, but we can’t let these circumstances take away our purpose and our knowledge that we can make a difference.”

She announced that AmeriCorps is partnering with the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to establish the “Safer America Network,” which aims to prevent gun violence by providing resources to at-risk youth.

Last year, Quavo traveled to Washington, DC, where he met with members of Congress for a panel discussion on gun violence prevention.

That helped establish a dialogue with Vice President Harris, who joined the rapper Tuesday for a discussion as she continues to mark National Gun Violence Awareness Month.

The new collaboration announced by Harris on Tuesday will consist of AmeriCorps members and volunteers working with schools and mental health providers by training schools and families on trauma-informed care, and prevent violence from occurring in the first place by increasing the resources available to at-risk young people.

Harris emphasized that gun violence “requires everybody’s priority in terms of addressing it and there are many ways to do it. That includes also what we need to do around election time.”

She continued, “Too many people – who I will call cowards – have been pushing this false choice to suggest you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. That’s a false choice. I’m in favor of the Second Amendment.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.