Call To Action
Call your Senators - both Republican and Democratic - state your strong support for H.B. 8: The Bipartisan Background Checks Act and for H.R. 1446: Enhanced Background Checks Act. Ask that they also renew legislation banning all assault and other semi-automatic weapons.
Seek out and engage your local community leaders, organizations and officials in actions, programs and legislation to reduce gun violence.
Seven days, seven mass shootings. The shooting in Atlanta electrified the nation as the expression of a rising tide of anti-Asian and Asian-American harassment and violence incited by the former President. The one in Boulder, Colorado – the hometown of My Weekly Resistance – shredded the presumed safety of an ordinary grocery store almost entirely populated by suburbanites engaging in the everyday routines of life. Atlanta and Boulder were bookends to 5 other shootings, so common that they were not even reported nationally until Atlanta and Boulder captured the media’s attention. During the same 7 days more people died of gun violence in Chicago alone than in both of the two mass shootings; these were deemed inconsequential and merely of local interest. Gun violence - spectacular or mundane - is a uniquely American epidemic.
For those close to the shootings, whether in Atlanta, Boulder, Chicago or any of the 100s of towns and cities where someone was shot last week, this is a period for grief and healing. Grief and healing take time - far more time than the time it takes for the national news cycle to turn away from these stories. If you have been touched by these tragedies directly because they happened in your community or indirectly, you should take as much time to grieve and process as you feel you, your families, and your friends need.
The total number of gun deaths and their causes are unknown because in America, owing to lobbying pressure from the NRA, we don’t keep an accurate count on the number of murders and suicides. By one reputable estimate, in 2018, there were 38,290 firearms deaths - 63% of which were from suicide, with the vast majority of the remainder from homicides that did not count as mass shootings. Only 2% of these deaths were from mass shootings.
At a minimum since 1968, over 1.5 million individuals in the United States have died from firearms and compared to 22 other high-income nations, the U.S. gun-related homicide rate is 25 times higher. Most of these deaths were caused by handguns, not assault weapons. The most distinctive feature of our society that explains the astronomically high numbers of gun fatalities is simply the sheer prevalence of guns in the U.S. There are 120 guns for every 100 non-police, non-military civilians.
In the face of these numbers, we must develop a wide range of strategies to reduce the number of guns in the U.S. This is a long-term project and everyone needs to join. Gun violence often seems remote to many of us who have not been touched personally by shootings, domestic violence or suicide. But it is not remote. It is as much a problem for the middle-class suburbanite as for those in poor urban neighborhoods. The map of daily murders, suicides and murder-suicides across the United States must be named for the pandemic it is.
We are asking all of you to actively support expanding background checks and banning private ownership of all assault and semi-automatic weapons, but we do not believe these are adequate solutions. These measures are only worthwhile as first steps.
Then take the next step. Real change requires de-escalation of gun violence at every level of our society. We need new strategies to combat gun violence. Common sense gun regulation, anti-violence education and - eventually - limiting and removing some of the ocean of firearms that surround us through gun buybacks will all play a role in bending the curve of gun deaths. Find a local group that is working to de-escalate gun violence. Call your Senators and join the long-term struggle.