UPDATE: Over 100,000 have signed our open statement to the NRA and Congress. Please join us.
Posted December 18th, 2012 by Kristin Rowe-FinkbeinerWhen I dropped my kids off at school yesterday, I was filled with a sense of dread and sadness that I’ve never felt before. I know I’m not alone.
While our lives will and must go on, we need to act now to protect our children and communities. Over 100,000 others have done that by signing our open statement to Congress and the National Rifle Association (NRA) to take action to protect our families.
*Can you help us increase that number to 150,000 signatures by adding your signature and urging friends and family to sign on too?
http://action.momsrising.org/letter/newtown_shooting2/
The more signatures we collect, the stronger the message we’ll send to Congress, to the NRA, and to the media that parents demand common sense gun policies.
Here’s our open statement: We are beyond heartbroken as we think of the first graders and others who died in Connecticut. This was the 16th mass shooting in our nation this year. We are parents. Many NRA members are also parents. And none of us want to live in a nation where children are gunned down. Today is the day for the NRA and for Congress to step up and start proposing laws that protect children and all people.
It’s time to put kids and common sense first. The NRA is the largest pro-gun lobby in our country. We need Congress and the NRA to step up and protect our children and communities.
What difference will these signatures make? Our statement — and our growing number of signers – is sending a powerful signal to Congress, the NRA, and the media about the passion and depth of common sense gun policies. We’ll be sharing our letter directly with Congressional leaders and the NRA in the coming weeks to keep up the pressure for action when our leaders may be tempted to move on.
What’s next? We’re going to be reaching out to every member of Congress in D.C. and in local districts urging them to quickly move forward safer gun policies. Stay tuned because we’ll need a lot of volunteers to reach every leader and spread our message about the need for safe communities far and wide.
*If you haven’t already, please take a moment now to help us reach 150,000 signatures by clicking here:
http://action.momsrising.org/letter/newtown_shooting2/
Thank you for taking action with us on this important issue and being with us as we navigate the road forward together.
9 Comments
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December 21, 2012 at 1:04 pm by hunter101sorry but all this talk about gun control is bullcrap. we have enough restrictions and laws on the books now that are simply not enforced.
as far as civilians carrying fire arms. cool. as long as they are law abiding citezens. also we need teachers and school staff trained adn armed in our schools. they need the opertunity if they want to to protect our kids from these gun man that do not folow the laws. do you think for on minute that a criminal will legaly get a gun. no. so if they make more laws to restrict law abiding americans they are the only ines getting hurt. the criminal does not care. nect you will be saying ban cars cause they kill to many. come on get a life people. we need to protect ourselves not help the criminal by not letting citezens protect themselves.
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December 19, 2012 at 8:32 pm by K@Kevin You proved the point that our watered down gun control laws are not working. Over 200 people were gunned down today. How many of them were children?
It is not acceptable for congress to wait until the end of January.
This is urgent and needs to be addressed right now.
While you have a right to enjoy target practice using a gun, or to defend your home with a gun, you should not have the right to invade public space with your guns.
The public has a right to bring their families into public places where no guns should be allowed to be present, and to enjoy tranquility, living without fear for loved ones being gunned down. The public has a right to a gun free society.
Guns belong at the shooting range, and in regulated hunting areas, and in the home of the gun owner.
No where else.
The public has the right to domestic tranquility, and that right has been usurped by the gun lobbying industry and a congress that rather than legislating to protect the safety of children, chose to legislate to expand the presence of guns for the gun lobbyists, and in the process, more children are now dead and never coming home.
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December 19, 2012 at 2:37 pm by Susan FieneI fail to see why anyone would need a gun for anything except for killing coyotes guilty of sheep worrying. The big military weapons that shoot multiple rounds without reloading have no validity in the hands of anyone except the military or the police. They only feed the unhealthy urges and fantasies of fearful/aggressive people. If the shooter had had to reload between each shot, more children would have gotten away. There is little reason for anyone to own a gun that does not live on a farm, and no reason why anyone needs multiple rounds on ammunition.
Further, I do not feel that anyone with a mentally unbalanced person in the home should be allowed to own a gun of any kind.
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December 18, 2012 at 6:57 pm by TrinaKevin: James Holmes was wearing body armor. Even if one of the theater patrons had been able to shoot at and hit him, it would not have stopped him. I don’t know if the Newton shooter was wearing armor, but I have heard rumors that he was.
Neither man was a “criminal”–ie, they did not have criminal records. Our current level of gun control laws would not have stopped them from purchasing weapons.
I have lived in a foreign country that has very, very strict gun control laws: it is extremely difficult to purchase a gun there. And, as a result, the amount of gun violence in that country is much, much lower than the U.S.
This is a complicated problem: I agree we need more funding and access to mental health care for adults in this country. But the fact remains that every country has severely mentally ill people; very few countries have the level of gun violence that the U.S. does. Something is out of balance here.
I understand that the 2nd Amendment gives people the right to bear arms. But, like with all Constitutional Amendments, it is written in very broad strokes, and it was written a very long time before modern military-style assault weapons were invented. As with the 1st Amendment, there are limits to it, and those limits are created by the citizens of this country, through popular votes, the judiciary, and the legislature. I have decided, as have many other Americans since 12/14/12, that we need to have more limits on the 2nd Amendment. I am going to fight for my right to drop my children off at school without fear of a civilian with high-powered weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition coming to murder them. I believe this is my right in a civil society, and having lived in a place with strong gun-control laws and less gun violence, I believe that this is the way to go: not to arm every man, woman, and child and tell them to go fend for themselves. I understand that you are trying, from your perspective, to make the country “safer,” but I’m sorry, I would be sickened to live in the type of society you are suggesting.
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JoAnn Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 2:34 pm
@Trina, I agree with everything you write. It is interesting that the First Amendment has been legislated about any number of times over our history while the Second Amendment has largely been untouched. Yet, it is words that do more to protect our freedom than guns do.
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We already have gun control! It was illegal to have guns inside the school in Connecticut. None of the law-abiding teachers and other adults had guns; they were following the gun-control law.
Guns were not allowed in Aurora, CO in the movie theatre. None of the law-abiding adults inside had guns. They followed the gun control law.
However, the people with intent to break the law didn’t follow the gun control laws, took firearms into the school and theatre, and shot the unarmed, law-abiding citizens inside!
If the law-abiding citizens had been allowed to have been armed, we wouldn’t have so many sad and broken families today!
Don’t push gun-control laws that rip our freedoms away and make us more vulnerable to criminals! Go after tougher law enforcement; empowering citizens to defend themselves and the defenseless among us; go after righteousness!
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Jessica Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 4:37 pm
No, Canada and the UK and Australia have gun control. We have the wild west.
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Mike Reply:
January 14th, 2013 at 2:37 am
@Jessica, Both the UK and Australia regret giving up their guns. They warn America not to do it. Check out Youtube news clips “Watch what happens when Guns are banned in Australia” and “American Gun Control – a U.K. Warning”.
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