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Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America

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Moms Demand Action Ads to Run in USA Today and Newspapers in Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Houston and Nashville; More than 115,000 Americans Have Signed the Petition Urging America's Largest Supermarket Retailer to Prohibit Open Carry; www.momsdemandaction.org/kroger
Today Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America launched its first-ever corporate-focused advertising campaign, "Guess Which One," aimed at convincing Kroger management to prohibit the open carry of firearms in and around its stores. The series of print and digital ads feature individuals open carrying firearms in the aisles of a supermarket, behavior that is permitted by Kroger policies, alongside people carrying other objects that are prohibited from most Kroger stores, including food, skateboards and a lack of appropriate attire.

The ads, which can be viewed here, are running as homepage takeovers in the online editions of USA Today, as well as the Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press; the ads will also appear in print editions of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, The Tennessean and USA Today in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Houston, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Baltimore and Washington, DC. Additionally, the ads will appear on a billboard in Cincinnati, Kroger's corporate headquarters.

"These images bring into stark contrast Kroger policies that prohibit skateboards, food and a lack of appropriate attire in stores, but allow the open carry of loaded guns. This inconsistency is particularly shocking given that the laws in a majority of states do not require a background check, permitting or even training to open carry a firearm," said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action. "In all states, but especially those where gun laws are lax, businesses have an obligation to protect their employees and patrons."

More than 115,000 Americans have already signed the petition calling on Michael Ellis, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. W. Rodney McMullen, Chief Executive Officer, of the Kroger Family of Stores to prohibit open carry in its supermarkets. Moms Demand Action launched the campaign in response to incidences of gun violence in and around stores, as well as open carry demonstrations organized by gun extremists who brought loaded semi-automatic assault weapons into stores ( photos here).

The ads, created by the Toronto office of GREY Advertising, are a follow-up to a p revious ad campaign developed by GREY that highlighted the absurdity of America's lax gun laws. In those ads, viewers are asked to guess which item is prohibited in the name of children's safety: a semi-automatic assault rifle, or an edition of Little Red Riding Hood, a dodgeball or a chocolate "Kinder Egg" candy.

The Kroger family of stores, the nation's largest supermarket retailer, includes Kroger, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, Foods Co, Gerbes Super Markets, Ralphs, Smith's, Harris Teeter, Jay C Food Stores, Owen's, Pay Less Supermarkets, City Market, Dillon's Food Store/Marketplace, Baker's, King Soopers, QFC and Fry's Food and Drug.

A majority of state laws allow people to openly carry loaded rifles in public with absolutely no training, permitting, or minimum age requirement. Combined with estimates that 40 percent of gun sales occur without a background check in the U.S., this means that people in most states can legally carry loaded rifles in public without ever having passed a criminal background check.

Open carry demonstrations at Kroger grocery stores in certain states also violate state laws. In Texas, a business that is licensed to sell alcoholic beverages is prohibited by state law from allowing individuals to openly carry firearms on the premises, and therefore Kroger could be jeopardizing its licenses by failing to prevent these demonstrations.

This ad campaign comes on the heels of Moms Demand Action members and supporters around the country shopping at stores that ask guests to leave their firearms at home and avoiding Kroger-owned stores over Labor Day weekend, posting on social media platforms using the hashtag #GroceriesNotGuns. Moms Demand Action supporters will avoid Kroger-owned supermarkets every weekend until Kroger prohibits open carry at its stores."

"Kroger's leadership has been resistant to prohibiting open carry because, as they've stated, we don't want employees to have to 'confront' a customer openly carrying a firearm, but neither do moms when we're carrying children," Watts continued. "If Kroger is concerned about the safety risks an armed individual poses for staff, management should put in place specific policies against open carry in and around its stores to protect both employees and customers."

The Moms Demand Action campaign follows similar actions aimed at Target, Starbucks, Chipotle, Sonic, Chili's and Jack in the Box that led these companies to take swift action to stand with Moms and enforce or adopt policies that prohibit open carry to protect the safety of their employees and customers.

About Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America

Much like Mothers Against Drunk Driving was created to change laws regarding drunk driving, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America was created to build support for common-sense gun reforms. The nonpartisan grassroots movement of American mothers is demanding new and stronger solutions to lax gun laws and loopholes that jeopardize the safety of our children and families. Since its inception after the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting, Moms Demand Action has established a chapter in every state of the country and is part of Everytown for Gun Safety along with Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Everytown is the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country with more than two million supporters including moms, mayors, survivors, and everyday Americans who are fighting for reforms that respect the Second Amendment and protect people. For more information or to get involved visit www.momsdemandaction.org. Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MomsDemandAction or on Twitter at @MomsDemand

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New Ads Highlight Alarming Contrast in Kroger's Policies Permitting Open Carry of Loaded Firearms, but Prohibiting Skateboards, Food, Shirtless Shoppers

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Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America launched its first-ever corporate-focused advertising campaign, "Guess Which One," aimed at convincing Kroger management to prohibit the open carry of firearms in and around its stores.

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When the Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," they were not ignoring the obvious differences that make people individuals-differences in appearance, personality, aptitude, skills, and character. All men are equal in the sense that, since we are all human, we are born with certain inherent, natural, and unalienable rights.

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The unfortunate pattern of gun violence and mass shootings are growing more frequent in American society. How did guns become such a significant part of our culture? Can common ground be found moving forward on gun policy? Experts and researchers speak on the social and legal aspects of America's connection to guns on "The Source" Wednesday at noon.
On November 7, a mass shooting at a country western-themed bar in Thousand Oaks, California killed 12 people. So far in 2018, there have been over 300 mass shootings in 36 states and thousands of other incidents ranging from unintentional shootings to defensive use.

The second amendment of the U.S. Constitution grants the right for "people to bear and keep arms." America has more guns than any other country in the world but the federal government does not have an official registry for firearms.

Differing viewpoints surrounding gun use and ownership has led to a long-standing debate about regulating firearms on the state and national level, especially in Texas where open carry is allowed.

57 percent of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2018 say gun laws should be "more strict" - a 5 percent increase from last year's data. How wide is the partisan divide over this issue?
Guests: "The Source" is a live call-in program airing Mondays through Thursdays from 12-1 p.m. Leave a message before the program at (210) 615-8982. During the live show, call 210-614-8980, email thesource@tpr.org or tweet at @TPRSource. This interview aired on Wednesday, November 14, 2018.
After the midterms elections, gun rights advocates lost some seats. Is there now room in America to find common ground for common sense gun laws? What can be done to prevent future incidents of gun violence?

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America's Gun Culture: How Did We Get Here And What's The Best Way Forward?

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The unfortunate pattern of gun violence and mass shootings are growing more frequent in American society. How did guns become such a significant part of our culture? Can common ground be found moving forward on gun policy? Experts and researchers speak on the social and legal aspects of America's connection to guns on "The Source" Wednesday at noon.

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Credit Credit Illustration by Melinda Josie

Feature

In the wake of mass shootings, a lifetime of gun ownership leads to unsettling questions.

Credit Credit Illustration by Melinda Josie

Two weeks before Christmas, I had a 9-millimeter pistol concealed in my waistband and a rifle with two 30-round magazines in the passenger seat beside me. I was driving down from the mountains to meet a fellow I didn't know at a Cracker Barrel off I-40 in the North Carolina foothills. He was looking to buy a Kel-Tec Sub-2000, and I had one for sale. Other than that, I didn't know him from Adam except for a few messages back and forth on Facebook.

We were both members of a Facebook group where people post pictures of firearms and buyers private-message to ask questions and make offers - sometimes cash, sometimes trade. I needed money to pay a buddy for an old '70s model Lark teardrop trailer, and that rifle wasn't doing anything but taking up space in the safe.

What I was doing was perfectly legal. In North Carolina, long-gun transfers by private sellers require no background checks. Likewise, it's perfectly legal to sell a handgun privately so long as the buyer has a purchase permit or a concealed-carry license. But as I headed up the exit to the restaurant where we agreed to meet, I felt uneasy. I was within the law, but it didn't feel as if I should have been.

He was backed into a space parallel to the dumpster, a black Ford F-250 with a covered bed, just as he described on Facebook Messenger. As I pulled in, he stepped out. He smiled, and I nodded.

"You can just leave it in the seat so we don't make anybody nervous," he said as I rolled down my window. There were families in rocking chairs in front of the restaurant. Customers were walking to their cars to get back on the road.

I climbed out of my truck so he could look the rifle over while I counted the money he'd left on his seat. He was about my age, somewhere in his early to mid-30s, white guy with a thick beard. He spoke with a heavy Southern accent not much different from my own. Said he built houses for a living, and that was about all the small talk between us. He liked the rifle. I needed the cash. We shook hands, and off we went.

There is rarely a moment when I'm not within reach of a firearm. When I lie down at night, there is an old single-shot New England Firearms Pardner leaned against the headboard, a loaded Smith & Wesson M&P Shield pistol on the nightstand. When I sit on the couch to work on an essay or a novel, there is a CZ 75 pistol on the coffee table. When I go to town for groceries, one of those two pistols is concealed inside my waistband.

Where I live in the mountains of North Carolina, I am not alone. With fewer than a dozen guns in the safe, I wouldn't even be considered a gun nut. Most of my friends have concealed-carry licenses and pistols on their person. If there are 10 of us in a room, there are most likely 10 loaded firearms, probably more, with a few of us keeping backups in ankle holsters. Rarely do we mention what we carry. We don't touch the guns or draw them from their holsters. They are unseen and unspoken of, but always there.

I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't around guns. When I was a kid, there was a gun rack hanging on the wall in the living room. My father kept a single-shot .410 and an old bolt action .22, small-game guns, though he didn't hunt anymore. I can remember watching older boys shoot skeet at a junkyard in the woods behind my house, my fingers plugged in my ears while orange clays turned to smoke against a backdrop of post oak and poplar. I can remember the first time my father taught me to shoot a rifle, how he had me sit on the concrete driveway and use my knee for a rest, aiming for a cardboard target in a honeysuckle thicket across the road. I think I was 8 or 9. I pulled the stock in too high on my shoulder, and craned my neck awkwardly to line up the iron sights. I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew the rules: Always assume a firearm is loaded. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Know your target and what's beyond it.

I come from a country people whose culture was destroyed by bulldozers and buildings. My father's family settled in and around Charlotte in the late 1700s. As a child, I would ride around with my grandmother in her light blue Oldsmobile. Where Winn-Dixies and Food Lions stood, she remembered fields where she worked tobacco and picked cotton. I grew up in a tiny holdout spot of country where I ran through a pasture of chest-high field grass to fish a farm pond most evenings, where just a mile down the road my uncle still kept a kennel of hounds to run rabbit each fall.

Guns were often a bridge between father and son. But my dad didn't keep a .38 Special on the bedside nightstand like my best friend's father down the street. I never walked into the house and found him cleaning and oiling a dozen pistols at the kitchen table the way I did with my next-door neighbor's dad. For my family, guns had always been a means of putting food on the table. My father never owned a handgun. He kept nothing for home defense.

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Credit Illustration by Melinda Josie

I was in eighth grade the first time I had a gun put to my head. It was December 1997, a year and four months before Columbine, at my middle school in Charlotte.

A teacher named Mr. Madison sent me and three other boys outside to look for stuff to put under a microscope - rocks, tree bark, empty snail shells, anything we could find. The school was located in a neighborhood three miles from downtown. A sewer line ran parallel and cut a wide trail through the woods between two residential streets. We were at the edge of the clearing. I saw someone walking up with a hood over his head. When he got close, he pulled the gun and jammed it into my temple.

I can remember that it was a little snub-nosed revolver, a brushed-steel frame. I can remember what it felt like pressed into the side of my head, how my heart raced when I went for my wallet, how I couldn't breathe. I had $50 my grandmother sent me for my birthday. My mom was going to take me to a skateboard shop after school to buy a new deck. There have been times I wondered what might've happened if it'd been like every other day, if I hadn't had a dollar to my name. If my wallet had been empty, would he have just walked away or become so frustrated that he pulled the trigger? Luckily, I had the money, and he took the $50 and ran.

When he was gone, the four of us rushed for the classroom and tried to tell Mr. Madison what happened, our words broken by shattered breath, him screaming: "Slow down! Slow down!" The rest of the day we recounted our story over and over to the principal. In the end, what happened was swept under the rug. My parents said the school was probably trying to keep the story off the news.

When I was 14, I couldn't imagine the impact that robbery would have on the rest of my life. I couldn't foresee a grown man feeling uncomfortable when he was corralled by passers-by on the street, an unnerving anxiety turning him to stone when he was surrounded by strangers. I remember an afternoon in my early 30s at a therapist's office describing the years that followed that incident, and she speculated that I surrounded myself with the people I did as a form of protection. There's a part of me that thinks that's too easy an answer, that it's passing the buck instead of taking responsibility. But for those next few years, I ran around wild.

I sat in the back of a police cruiser praying the officers wouldn't pop the trunk on the car parked in front of my truck, knowing my friend had a shotgun and a quarter pound of weed sitting on the spare. I rode in the passenger seat while a buddy rolled down the window and fired a pistol into the night, blowing off steam after a breakup, empty casings spitting against the windshield. I dropped to the ground as gunfire rang from a car at a bonfire party. I pushed friends behind the brick foundation of a house as a shootout erupted over pills. There were times when someone could have easily been shot and killed.

The second and last time I had a gun put to my head it was by the police. After a drunken fight, I left a friend's apartment to walk five miles and sleep on the porch of a buddy's house across the river. I was walking down the side of Wilkinson Boulevard in Belmont. I was carrying a shoe box. I saw a police cruiser pass me and make a U-turn at a stoplight up ahead. When the Crown Vic came back, the driver jumped the median and next thing I knew there were multiple cars, lights flashing, officers ordering me to the ground.

They had their guns drawn. There was a K-9 unit, and the German shepherd wouldn't quit barking. I was lying flat on my stomach, and one officer came forward and put his knee in my back, his service weapon pushed into the base of my skull. They let the dog close enough that I could feel him barking against my ear. They said I matched the description of someone who'd burglarized some houses nearby. They asked what was in the shoe box, and I stuttered, "Papers." They asked if they opened the box if there was anything inside that would hurt them. With my face in the grass and the officer's weight making it hard to breathe, I was so terrified that I couldn't mutter a single word. I just shook my head, and they opened that box to find nothing but a stack of notebook papers, a pile of half-assed stories I'd written. They told me I could get up, and I stood there trembling while they apologized. They gave me a ride across the river and dropped me off at the Mecklenburg County line, told me they were sorry but they couldn't take me any farther.

Credit Illustration by Melinda Josie

I moved to the mountains not long after that. As soon as I arrived in Jackson County, I knew I'd never leave. A hundred and fifty miles west of where I grew up, I found a community that reminded me of my grandmother, where folks still kept big gardens and canned the vegetables they grew. They still filled the freezer with meat taken by rod and rifle - trout and turkey, dove and rabbit, deer, bear, anything in season.

I keep a close-knit group of friends here, most of whom are at least 20 years my senior. Our generational difference is erased by a shared passion for wilderness and time spent in the field with gun in hand. This past Christmas, one of the men I hunt with, a man we call Son in Law, handed down a Model 94 Winchester to his grandson. The grandson would be the fourth generation to hunt with that rifle. A few weeks later, the boy took that .30-30 lever action into the field and killed his first deer with it - the same as his uncle, his grandfather and great-grandfather. Those types of things are rare now, even in places like Appalachia.

I'm the youngest member of my hunting camp - me 34, everyone else in their mid-to-late 60s, a few on up past 70. Among these men, there are centuries of experience gathered around the campfire each night. After more than 40 seasons wandering the same woods, they've come to know the land intimately. They toss around names - the Owl Boxes, the U.F.O. Hole, the Refrigerator Stand - places they've killed deer for decades. They tell stories about men who have died, hunters like Goat Man, who carried an onion in his pocket and plowed down trees in his beat-up Bronco; or Hawkeye, who ran moonshine and damn near drank a boy to death after the kid slapped a sack of weed on the poker table and declared, "Boys, that's the shit that killed Elvis." The old men talk, and I listen.

I killed my biggest deer to date on the 2nd of November from a tree one of those men sent me to. Fifteen feet up a hickory, I watched a tree line at the edge of a clear cut. I heard heavy footsteps and eased around the right side of the tree for a look, and there he stood. The buck walked to my left, and I slipped behind the trunk, shouldered the rifle and balanced the fore end on a tree step I'd augured into the opposite side for a rest.

He was broadside when I slid the cross hairs onto his shoulder. The clear cut, strewn with downed timber and studded with sawed stubs, was too rough to track and drag, so I didn't want to risk a shot for heart and lungs and have the deer run a hundred yards. I wanted to drop him where he stood. Pin his shoulders together and buckle him.

Just before the deer strolled behind a cedar sapling, I touched the trigger, and the .308 blew apart the morning. A hundred and fifty grains of copper-jacketed lead hit just behind the shoulder and blood-shot the backside to pudding. The buck stooped forward and sprinted, back legs driving him over tangled ground. He made it 40 yards before he crashed. From my stand, I could just make out the white of his stomach through the brush. I watched his ribs rise with each breath, that breathing slowing, slowing, then gone.

There is a sadness that only hunters know, a moment when lament overshadows any desire for celebration. Life is sustained by death, and though going to the field is an act of taking responsibility for that fact, the killing is not easy, nor should it be.

I climbed down a half-hour later but didn't walk straight to the deer. Instead I went to the place where I shot him, a yard shy of that cedar sapling, and followed the blood trail to where he lay. He was a big-bodied eight-point that would feed me for a year. I knelt there and ran my hands across his coat. It took nearly an hour to drag him back to the trail, another half-mile from there to the truck.

A few days later, I was driving back home from hunting camp in McCormick, S.C., with the head of that eight-point in a cooler in the truck bed, the rest of the deer hanging to age at the processor. On a long straightaway, I passed a state trooper driving in the opposite direction. In the rearview, I saw him slam on the brakes and make a U-turn in the middle of the road, blue lights flashing. I was running just under 60 in a 55 and didn't think there was any way he was pulling me over.

The 9-millimeter I always carry was loaded and concealed on my side. Until that moment I'd never been pulled over while carrying a concealed weapon. I knew the protocol. I knew what I was legally obligated to say. But I was nervous as hell as the trooper stepped out of his cruiser, situated his campaign hat and approached the side of my truck.

He was a young black man with braces on his teeth. He looked to be in his early 20s, had kind eyes and was built like a linebacker. He asked for my license and registration, and I told him I needed to inform him that I had a concealed-carry license and that there was a weapon on my person. He asked where the gun was located, and I told him roughly 4 o'clock. He asked if I could get to my wallet, and I told him the pistol was pretty close to my back pocket. There was a moment of hesitation when he considered what to do next. Then he told me to move slowly as I took my wallet from my pocket.

When the trooper had my license and registration, he went to his cruiser. In a few minutes, he came back to the window and issued me a warning for speeding. I asked if there was anything I could've done differently to make him more comfortable when he first approached the truck. The trooper told me what I'd said was fine. He said that some officers might have been uncomfortable with where the pistol was located, being holstered near my wallet, but that he felt we had a good rapport. Depending on the officer, some might have asked me to step out of the truck so they could remove the weapon. He smiled and told me: "But this is South Carolina. Most every car I pull over has a gun."

As I headed toward the mountains, all I could think about was Philando Castile, the young African-American man who had a permit to carry and was shot to death in his car in front of his girlfriend and her young daughter by a Minnesota policeman after notifying the officer that he had a weapon. All I could think about was how things might have been different if the situation was reversed and that young black state trooper with braces had been behind the wheel, a white trooper cautiously approaching the car. It was impossible not to think that if I were black, I'd be too scared to carry a gun. It was impossible not to recognize how gun culture reeks of privilege.

Credit Illustration by Melinda Josie

Last summer I drove back to Charlotte to visit my father for his birthday. While I was there, I went into a Cabela's store in Fort Mill, S.C., to buy him a new depth finder for his fishing boat. After I found what I was looking for, I headed across the store to see if there were any good deals on ammo.

There were floor displays of AR-15s, and probably a hundred or more other rifles and shotguns for anyone to walk up and hold. I watched a kid about 8 or 9 pick up one of those ARs and shoulder it to the center of his chest. He held the gun awkwardly, cocked his head hard to the side, squeezed one eye closed to aim and dry-fired the weapon. I watched two men, presumably his father and grandfather, smile and laugh, then break out their cellphones to snap a few pictures.

I remembered how when I was his age, I used to love going to the sporting-goods section of Walmart to look at fishing lures and camouflage clothes. I'd walk over near the register and push the manual turntable on the curio display to look at all the rifles and shotguns. There were usually a few big game guns - a gray stock Remington 783 in .30-06, maybe a Marlin 336 lever action - a couple of pump shotguns, a single shot .410 or 20-gauge. There were always Ruger 10/22s and Marlin Model 60s, the .22LRs kids unwrapped when their grandfathers gave them their first rifles for a birthday or Christmas. There were always guns, but nothing like the assault weapons that line the shelves today.

Maybe it's how I was raised and the types of firearms my family kept, but the idea of owning a rifle designed for engaging human targets out to 600 meters just never interested me. I keep a Savage 10 in .308 to hunt whitetail and hogs. I have a CZ 920 that's absolute hell on a dove field. I have a handful of .22 rifles that I use for plinking at the range and hunting squirrels and rabbits each winter. Then there are the weapons I keep for defense - the shotgun by the bed, the pistols - firearms whose sole purpose would be to take human life if I were left with no other choice. I've witnessed how quickly a moment can turn to a matter of life and death. I live in a region where 911 calls might not bring blue lights for an hour. Whether it's preparation or paranoia, I plan for worst-case scenarios and trust no one but myself for my survival.

My friends see no difference between the guns I own and their ARs. One or two of them rationalize assault weapons the same way I justify what sits by my bed. When I ask if those rifles are really the best option for home defense, they joke about the minute hand of the doomsday clock inching closer to midnight. They post Instagram photos of Sig Sauer MCXs and tac vests loaded with extra magazines, their bug-out bags by the door as they wait for the end of the world.

But a majority defend their ARs the same way I defend the guns I use for plinking and hunting. They say they own them because they're fun at the range and affordable to shoot. They use the rifles for punching paper, a few for shooting coyotes. Every weekend they fire hundreds of rounds from custom rifles they've spent thousands of dollars building. They add bump stocks and Echo Triggers to increase rates of fire and step as close to Title II of the federal Gun Control Act as legally possible without the red tape and paperwork. They fire bullets into Tannerite targets that blow pumpkins into the sky.

None of them see a connection between the weapons they own and the shootings at Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Aurora, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland. They see mug shots of James Holmes, Omar Mateen, Stephen Paddock, Nikolas Cruz - "crazier than a shithouse rat," they say. "If it hadn't been that rifle, he'd have done it with something else." They fear that what starts as an assault-weapons ban will snowball into an attack on everything in the safe. I don't believe that politicians are going to ban ordinary guns or overturn the Second Amendment, but I understand their reasoning because I understand what's at stake. I think about that boy picking up that AR in Cabela's, and I'm torn between the culture I grew up with and how that culture has devolved. There are changes I know must come, changes to what types of firearms line the shelves and to the background checks and ownership requirements needed to carry one out the door. And there is an unrelenting fear of what could be lost - a subsistence culture already threatened by the loss of public land, rising costs and a widening rural-urban divide; the right of individuals to protect their own lives and the lives of their families.

A few days after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February, I sat down with a buddy over coffee at the firehouse where he works. The news was on in the background. I told him I'd be fine with an assault-weapons ban. He cut a look in my direction as if I'd absolutely lost my mind. I asked him why anyone needs to own an AR, an AK, an SKS. He said that the question is irrelevant, that the reason doesn't supersede the right. I could feel my blood pressure rising and my face getting warm. I could see in his eyes that he was equally agitated. Despite everything we have in common, despite the fact that he's my best friend and we were going squirrel hunting in a few days, the two of us fundamentally disagree. Someone came into the room and changed the subject, and I could sense that he was as thankful as I was. As sad as it is to say, the silence is easier. While the two of us sat there sipping coffee, there were kids on the television in the background, high school survivors who were willing to say what we are not, and I was ashamed.

One recent afternoon I rode with my girlfriend, Ashley, an hour east to Asheville. It was the first week of March, but a warm spell had the willows green along the creek in the pasture at our house. It was one of those pretty, late-winter days with bluebird skies when the trees are still naked on the mountains and you can see every shadow and contour of the landscape. Knowing how I hate going to the city, she bribed me with a trip to the Field & Stream sporting-goods store if I would ride along.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I thought about the last time we were there, back before Christmas. Ashley didn't grow up with guns as I did. She'd never owned one before I gave her a shotgun to keep by the bed when I'm away from home. For a year or so, she'd been considering a pistol. She'd held dozens of models but still hadn't decided on anything.

We were at the back of the store looking in the glass case at 1911s. All of a sudden, her eyes got big and she raised her hands then ducked behind me and grabbed onto my arm. I turned and stared down the aisle where a kid who looked about 18 was aiming an AR-15 the salesman had handed him. The muzzle was pointed in our direction. Ashley was terrified. I've been at the counter enough to know the predicament - wanting to shoulder a rifle to test the feel but having nowhere sensible to aim. The kid lowered the rifle and went back to talking to the salesman, neither seeming to notice us standing there, Ashley frozen behind me.

On the way out, she just kept saying: "He was a kid. He looked like he should've been in high school. What does a kid need a rifle like that for? What does anybody need a rifle like that for?" And the truth was, I didn't have an answer. The truth is, there are guns I feel justified in owning and guns I feel belong on battlefields. I know the reasons my friends give for owning these weapons, and I know that their answers feel inadequate to me. I know that part of what they're missing or refusing to acknowledge is how fear ushered in this shift in gun culture over the past two decades.

Fear is the factor no one wants to address - fear of criminals, fear of terrorists, fear of the government's turning tyrannical and, perhaps more than anything else, fear of one another. There's no simple solution like pulling fear off the shelf. It's an intangible thing. I recognize this, because I recognize my own and I recognize that despite all I know and believe I can't seem to overcome it. I'm sure that part of why I carry is having a pistol put to my head when I was 14. I'm sure that part of it is having hidden behind walls while shots were fired. Maybe it's a combination of those two things coupled with headlines and hysteria, the growing presence of mass shootings in American culture.

I don't like being in places where I can't find the exits. I don't like crowds and being surrounded by more people than I can keep my eyes on. For the most part nowadays, I stay at the house. When I have to leave, I slide my holster into my waistband before I put on my boots. When a book tour sends me out of North Carolina, 36 states honor the concealed-carry license in my wallet. Unlike a lot of those who carry, I don't buy into that only-way-to-stop-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun-is-a-good-guy-with-a-gun bravado. I have no visions of being a hero. Instead, I find myself looking for where I'd run, asking myself what I would get behind. The gun is the last resort. It's the final option when all else is exhausted.

When Ashley and I left the store, we headed toward the Levi's outlet, where she planned to buy a new pair of jeans. The walkway narrowed, and the sidewalks were filled with people and noise. Even though I knew the risk was remote, my mind raced with all those questions of what I'd do if someone suddenly opened fire. As we walked, I could feel the pistol holstered on my side, the weight of my gun tugging at my belt. The fear was lessened by knowing that there was a round chambered, that all it would take is the downward push of a safety and the short pull of a trigger for that bullet to breathe. I felt safer knowing that gun was there.

David Joy is an author who lives in the mountains of North Carolina. His third novel, ''The Line That Held Us,'' will be published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in August. This is his first article for the magazine.
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Gun Culture Is My Culture. And I Fear for What It Has Become.

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Feature In the wake of mass shootings, a lifetime of gun ownership leads to unsettling questions. Credit Credit Illustration by Melinda Josie Two weeks before Christmas, I had a 9-millimeter pistol concealed in my waistband and a rifle with two 30-round magazines in the passenger seat beside me.

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Data shows gun ownership in the US has grown over the last several years

Gun violence is a fixture in American life - but the issue is a highly political one, pitting gun control advocates against people who are fiercely protective of their right to bear arms.

We've looked into some of the numbers behind firearms in the US.

Mass shootings on the rise

There have been more than 560 mass shootings across the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed. Their figures include shootings that happen in homes and in public places.

For each of the last three years there have been more than 600 mass shootings - almost two a day on average.

The deadliest such attack, in Las Vegas in 2017, killed more than 50 people and left 500 wounded. The vast majority of mass shootings, however, leave fewer than 10 people dead.

How do US gun deaths break down?

48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the US during 2021, according to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That's nearly an 8% increase from 2020, which was a record-breaking year for firearm deaths.

While mass shootings and gun murders (homicides) generally garner much media attention, more than half of the total in 2021 were suicides.

That year, more than 20,000 of the deaths were homicides, according to the CDC.

Data shows more than 50 people are killed each day by a firearm in the US.

That's a significantly larger proportion of homicides than is the case in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, and many other countries.

How many guns are there in the US?

While calculating the number of guns in private hands around the world is difficult, the latest figures from the Small Arms Survey - a Swiss-based research project - estimated that there were 390 million guns in circulation in the US in 2018.

The US ratio of 120.5 firearms per 100 residents, up from 88 per 100 in 2011, far surpasses that of other countries around the world.

More recent data out of the US suggests that gun ownership grew significantly over the last few years. A study, published by the Annals of Internal Medicine in February, found that 7.5 million US adults became new gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021.

This, in turn, exposed 11 million people to firearms in their homes, including 5 million children. About half of new gun owners in that time period were women, while 40% were either black or Hispanic.

Who supports gun control?

A majority of Americans are in favour of gun control.

57% of Americans surveyed said they wanted stricter gun laws - although this fell last year - according to polling by Gallup.

32% said the laws should remain the same, while 10% of people surveyed said they should be "made less strict".

The issue is extremely divisive, falling largely along party lines.

"Democrats are nearly unanimous in their support for stricter gun laws," another Gallup study noted, with nearly 91% in favour of stricter gun laws.

Only 24% Republicans, on the other hand, agreed with the same statement, along with 45% of Independent voters.

Some states have taken steps to ban or strictly regulate ownership of assault weapons. Laws vary by state but California, for example, has banned ownership of assault weapons with limited exceptions.

Some controls are widely supported by people across the political divide - such as restrictions governing the sale of guns to people who are mentally ill or on "watch" lists.

Who opposes gun control?

Despite years of financial woes and internal strife, the National Rifle Association (NRA) remains the most powerful gun lobby in the United States, with a substantial budget to influence members of Congress on gun policy.

Over the last several election cycles, it, and other organisations, have consistently spent more on pro-gun rights messaging than their rivals in the gun control lobby.

A number of states have also gone as far as to largely eliminate restrictions on who can carry a gun. In June 2021, for example, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a "permitless carry bill" that allows the state's residents to carry handguns without a licence or training.

Similarly, in April last year Georgia became the 25th in the nation to eliminate the need for a permit to conceal or openly carry a firearm. The law means any citizen of that state has the right to carry a firearm without a licence or a permit.

The law was backed by the NRA, and leaders within the organisation called the move "a monumental moment for the Second Amendment".

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How many US mass shootings have there been in 2023?

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Explaining some of the key statistics behind gun ownership and attacks linked to guns in the US.

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The Second Amendment to the Constitution states simply: A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That language and that idea were clearly important to the Founding Fathers.

But why?

The Second Amendment is rooted in multiple sources: English law; America's revolutionary experience; and contemporary European political thought. In short, the basic idea was that a people have a right to defend themselves against tyranny; and that if a government breaches the social contract with its people, the people have a right to overthrow that government. Popular access to arms is the sine qua non of such an ideal.

This argument lies at the heart of the Declaration of Independence when the colonists overthrew the rule of the king of Great Britain. So, in a sense, every American celebrates this idea every year.

It's hard to imagine the generation that launched the American Revolution doing so without embracing the ideas in the Second Amendment.

For the colonists, the fear of tyranny was very real. Absolute monarchy was the norm in mainland Europe. Conformity in religion and politics was enforced by large standing armies. The idea of popular sovereignty was heretical.

Abuses in Europe were well-publicized and made even more real by some of the victims ending up in America as refugees.

One glaring example was the persecution of Protestants in France in the 1680s. Soldiers were billeted in Protestant homes and allowed to steal and abuse the inhabitants until they converted to Catholicism or left the country. Some of these Huguenot refugees found new homes in America.

England and its offshoots in the colonies were an exception to the absolutist trend in Europe, and the Whiggish strand of the political class was constantly on guard against royal encroachments on the rights of the people and their representatives in Parliament.

The Whigs saw themselves as heirs to those who had fought against King Charles I in the 1640s when he tried to restrict parliamentary privileges and were the direct heirs of those who overthrew King James II in 1688.

One of King James's offenses was to attempt to disarm Protestants. He was seen as pro-Catholic and there were fears he was planning to force conversions.

It was a year after that Glorious Revolution that England adopted its own Bill of Rights. One of the "ancient" rights that it enumerated was the right to keep and bear arms, a fact cited by the US Supreme Court in a key ruling on the Second Amendment in 2008.

The colonists saw themselves as fitting very much into this Whig tradition when they began to resist London's attempts to start billeting troops in their homes and raising unlawful taxes.

The colonists also drew inspiration from the ideas of political thinkers of Europe's Enlightenment." John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in particular, expounded on the "social contract."

The idea that people can overthrow a tyrannical government may be admirable in theory, perhaps, but the US does not have a good record of accepting the theory when applied against Washington. The US was not happy when the Confederate States tried to put this idea into practice in 1861; nor when the Black Panthers advocated it in the 1960s; nor even when angry farmers in Pennsylvania tried it in the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s.

The core problem, in practice, is who speaks for the people?

Besides the collective right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment was probably also designed to defend the individual's right to bear arms. Some of the earliest legal commentaries in the new republic expound on it, like St. George Tucker's annotated version of Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England."

But the definitive clarification did not emerge from the Supreme Court until 2008, in DC vs. Heller, when the court ruled 5 to 4 that the Second Amendment does refer to the right of individuals to keep and bear arms and not just to a collective right of communities to defend themselves against tyranny.

In a sense, the question before America today is whether the theoretical need to defend against tyranny still outweighs the apparent public health need to reduce gun deaths.

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The Second Amendment to the Constitution states simply: A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That language and that idea were clearly important to the Founding Fathers. But why?

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Why is America giving gun licences to blind people?

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It might seem like asking for trouble, but Iowa is not the only US state to allow blind people to carry guns. After all, it is their right under the second amendment

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Stevie Wonder says he is willing to test just how "crazy" United States gun laws are by purchasing his own firearm.

CNN's Piers Morgan caught up with Wonder after President Barack Obama's second inauguration ceremony on Monday to discuss the future of America. During the interview, the 62-year-old musician advocated for change and discussed the issue of gun laws, saying they are so lax that even a legally blind man can go out and buy a firearm with ease.

"I was thinking, you know, because I saw you on the TV talking about the whole gun [control] thing, and I was talking to one of my friends and I said, 'You know what? You should go get me a gun or me go with you to get a gun and then show how easy it is for me to get a gun,'" he told Morgan. " Imagine me with a gun. It's just crazy."

Adding, "I think we have to do something about it and I'm hoping in these next four years with an idea that I've come up with that I can do something about how we can come up with a solution, because there's a solution to any problem and I think we just have to get to it."

The Gun Control Act of 1968 details who is prohibited from owning firearms, including those convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; fugitives; non-citizens; and anyone discharged from the military under dishonorable conditions. Blind people are not legally prohibited from owning guns.

This is not the first time the "Superstition" singer has called for harsher gun control legislation.

On Dec. 16, days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Wonder spoke out against "ridiculous" gun laws.

"With guns and their accessibilities, there have to be stronger and stricter gun laws. It's okay saying no, it's okay particularly when you know some people are not as mentally stable," he told Rolling Stone magazine. "So you don't want them to have a gun or any other kind of weapon at their disposal." Later adding, "No matter how you look at it, it's ridiculous and if you don't see that there's a need to think differently, to see things a little differently than you did in the past, then you're not in touch with today, you're still lost in yesterday."

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Stevie Wonder Mocks Gun Laws, Says He Will Buy Firearm To Show How Easy It Is

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Stevie Wonder says he is willing to test just how "crazy" United States gun laws are by purchasing his own firearm. CNN's Piers Morgan caught up with Wonder after President Barack Obama's second inauguration ceremony on Monday to discuss the future of America.

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World Net, from Princeton University, defines a "Civil Right" as a right or rights belonging to a person by reason of citizenship including especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th amendments and subsequent acts of congress including the right to legal, social and economic equality. This makes gun ownership as much of a civil right as freedom of speech, religion and freedom of the press.

The Heller case challenged several laws in Washington DC that constituted a complete ban on the Second Amendment rights for D.C. residents with no exception given for self-defense. In the Heller case, the Supreme court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental individual right to have functional firearms in the home that are commonly owned without being connected to any service of the state or military organization. The Supreme Court also ruled that the Second Amendment is a fundamental part of the bill of rights, which guarantees citizen's individual rights. Lastly, in this 5 to 4 decision with Associate Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the majority, the Supreme Court affirmed that Washington DC gun laws violated the Second Amendment Civil Rights of DC residents and to positively restore those rights.

Quotes from Scalia's majority opinion:

D.C.'s requirement that lawfully owned firearms in the home, such as registered long arms, be "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or device" also violates the Second Amendment as it makes it impossible for citizens to use those firearms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense. (1, 58)

In sum, we hold that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.

When the U.S. Constitution was written, there was much debate over whether or not to include a specific bill of rights. Many people at the time believed that if the government made a list of protected rights, then all rights that were not on the list would be trampled. Others felt that it was necessary to include specific freedoms to keep them from being taken away by an overactive federal government. Still others felt that we needed to trust our government to lead us, and not shackle them with things they could and could not do.

Originally, the Constitution was approved without a Bill of Rights, then sent to the states for ratification. Many of the states, however, did not approve of a Constitution that did not guarantee the protection of certain rights and freedoms. So, in the process of ratification, many of the states voted for the constitution while specifically listing rights they felt should be included by amendment. Among these rights were freedom of religion, speech, and the right to keep and bear arms.

James Madison was largely in charge of drafting the original Bill of Rights. He looked over a very large list of proposed amendments which had been recommended by various states, then he narrowed them down. He submitted them to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, where they passed ten of them, and those ten became known as the Bill of Rights.

According to the writings cited in "That Every Man Be Armed."

"Mr. Madison has introduced long-expected amendments...It contains a bill of rights...the right of the people to bear arms." -Trench Coxe (p. 76).

The intent of these amendments was to protect individuals from government powers. They were meant as a guarantee to the individual state governments as well as the American citizens that the Federal government would not try to take away the freedoms which many of them had so recently fought for. Senator William Grayson wrote to Patrick Henry; "Last Monday, a string of amendments were presented to the lower House; these altogether respected personal liberty..." (p. 76).

"To preserve Liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, and member of the first Continental Congress, which passed the Bill of Rights)

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World Net, from Princeton University, defines a "Civil Right" as a right or rights belonging to a person by reason of citizenship including especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th amendments and subsequent acts of congress including the right to legal, social and economic equality.

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March for Our Lives activist Emma Gonzalez says some of the most pressing issues in the current gun control discussion are misconceptions about what gun regulators actually want.

"We try our very darndest to get out the fact that we don't want to take away guns and that we are pro second amendment," Gonzalez tells Variety. "We're not trying to take guns out of society, we're trying to regulate them."

After surviving the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School earlier this year, Gonzalez rose to national fame after delivering a powerful speech at a March for Our Lives rally in May. Since then, she has continued to fight for gun regulation on a national level while combating misinformation about what that means.

"If you're already a responsible gun owner, then this has nothing to do with you," Gonzalez says. "We're talking about the people that are irresponsible, the people who take advantage of the fact that the system is not very strict."

Gonzalez also spoke about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' visit to her high school following the shooting, which she says broke up a student therapy session. DeVos' plans to bring more guns into classrooms are misguided, she adds; schools should be getting more funding to pay teachers, not to arm them.

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Emma Gonzalez on Gun Control Misconceptions: 'We Are Pro Second Amendment'

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March for Our Lives activist Emma Gonzalez says some of the most pressing issues in the current gun control discussion are misconceptions about what gun regulators actually want. "We try our very darndest to get out the fact that we don't want to take away guns and that we are pro second amendment," Gonzalez tells Variety.

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A very controversial ad campaign....

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A National Rifle Association of America ad, narrated by conservative television host Dana Loesch, stirred controversy online.

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About Brady | Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

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Mission StatementThe mission of the Brady organization and its Million Mom March is to create a safer America by cutting gun deaths in half by 2025.Brady's Unique ApproachOf the 33,000 people who die from gun violence in this country each year, how many could be saved?

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Gun Control and Safety: Personal Essays and National Gun Violence Day Awareness - Vogue

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A powerful personal essay series on gun control and safety-from an account of Sandy Hook to the violence at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina-to fuel the national conversation around gun legislation and Second Amendment rights.

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Friday was a bad day for people who enjoy both AR-15s and a reliable sedan with that new-car smell.

Several companies, including multiple rental-car concerns, discontinued partnerships and programs they had with the National Rifle Association as the hashtag "boycottNRA" stood atop Twitter all day, in the wake of last week's mass shooting at a Florida high school.

Since that massacre, student survivors have led an unusually aggressive push to shame lawmakers into changing overly permissive gun laws. Late this week, anti-NRA sentiment shifted from state capitals to boardrooms.

As social media lit up with the outrage that is its native language, First National Bank of Omaha, which had issued an NRA-linked Visa card, bowed to pressure on Thursday afternoon.

Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA. As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card.
- First National Bank (@FNBOmaha) February 22, 2018

On Friday, more businesses followed suit, including Hertz and Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

We have notified the NRA that we are ending the NRA's rental car discount program with Hertz.
- Hertz (@Hertz) February 23, 2018

Thank you for contacting us! All three of our brands have ended the discount for NRA members. This change will be effective March 26. Thank you again for reaching out. Kind regards, Michael
- EnterpriseRentACar (@enterprisecares) February 23, 2018

Other companies that cut off NRA programs included software company Symantec and insurance company Chubb Limited, which announced that it would stop underwriting an NRA-branded insurance policy.

And corporations that used to do business with the organization, like hotel chains Best Western and Wyndham, had to reassure customers that they had already severed ties.

On Saturday, the exodus continued. Delta and United announced that they would stop offering discounted fares to NRA members to attend the group's annual meetings.

Delta is reaching out to the NRA to let them know we will be ending their contract for discounted rates through our group travel program. We will be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website.
- Delta (@Delta) February 24, 2018

United is notifying the NRA that we will no longer offer a discounted rate to their annual meeting and we are asking that the NRA remove our information from their website.
- United Airlines (@united) February 24, 2018

Despite growing more and more extreme in its anti-liberal, anti-media rhetoric, the NRA has for the most part escaped a business backlash, even amid a steady stream of mass shootings over the years. But with major gun-reform legislation a pipe dream at the federal level (for now), the business world may have more leverage to change the way guns are bought and sold than anyone else.

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Businesses Cut NRA Ties As Pressure Campaign Mounts

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Friday was a bad day for people who enjoy both AR-15s and a reliable sedan with that new-car smell. Several companies, including multiple rental-car concerns, discontinued partnerships and programs they had with the National Rifle Association as the hashtag "boycottNRA" stood atop Twitter all day, in the wake of last week's mass shooting at a Florida high school.

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On Friday morning, at least ten people were killed during a shooting at Santa Fe High School outside of Houston, Texas. The massacre came only three months after the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which prompted many people (including student survivors of the massacre) to join the fight for stricter gun-control laws. Since then, we've seen a few tangible steps taken across the country, from legislation to make it harder to buy guns to retailers severing ties with the NRA. But there is still much left to be done, and clearly, such violence is still occurring. Here, what you can do about gun-control.

Donate to these gun-control organizations.

There are a number of gun-control groups that could use your donations. Everytown for Gun Safety works to prevent gun violence through raising awareness and promoting gun-control legislation. There's also the Brady Campaign, which aims to cut gun deaths in half by 2025; the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, which uses policy development and advocacy to prevent firearm violence; and the Giffords Law Center, which was founded by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords - who was shot in 2011 - and her husband Mark Kelly. These aren't the only groups, but they are doing some truly important work.

Participate in the demonstrations.

On March 24, people took to the street for the March for Our Lives protests across the country, to demand that steps are taken to prevent mass shootings and protect students at schools. The march was organized by a group of teenage survivors of the Stoneman Douglas shooting. Participating in such demonstrations is a good way to show support for stricter gun-control laws.

Pressure politicians to stop taking money from the NRA.

As Donald Trump pointed out, many members of the Republican party seem to be "afraid" of the NRA - as in, they don't want to go against the gun lobby for fear of losing campaign donations or supporters. That's why gun-control groups and advocates are calling out politicians who accept NRA money. Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, for instance, recently took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, in which the groups list around 100 lawmakers, their phone numbers, and the amount of money they received from the NRA. The goal is to pressure politicians to stop taking money from the gun lobby - and actually help pass gun-control policy.

.@Everytown and @MomsDemand placed a two-page ad, which will run Wednesday in the @nytimes, listing the names of lawmakers, their phone numbers, and the amount of money they've received from the @NRA: https://t.co/3cYhxoB4Xs#ThrowThemOut pic.twitter.com/CDFQYbq5Be
- Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 21, 2018

Reach out to your elected officials.

In addition to calling out politicians for taking money from the gun lobby, you can also reach out to your elected officials (whether they're affiliated with the NRA or not) to let them know just how important gun-control is to you. If you're not sure who your representatives are (or how to contact them), Everytown for Gun Safety makes the whole process pretty easy: just fill out a form on their website, and they'll find the appropriate number for you to call in Congress. You can also visit ContactTheCongress.org for more information on who you should contact and how to reach them.

Volunteer with groups leading the fight.

Not only do gun-control organizations need donations, they could also use volunteers to help lead their grassroots efforts. Women Against Gun Violence is asking people to volunteer just a few minutes a week to help them spread their message (it's as simple as making a call or sending a letter). If you sign up on this page, your local Moms Demand Action chapter will get in touch with ways you can get involved.

Voice your support on social media.

You can also lend your voice to the numerous social-media campaigns seeking to raise awareness of gun violence and gun-control legislation. There's the #NeverAgain movement, which was created after the Stoneman Douglas shooting by teenage survivors of the attack. You can also tweet at politicians and businesses to pressure them to act on gun-control (a move that seemed to have worked after a number of brands cut ties with the NRA following a social-media campaign).
This post has been updated throughout.
All of Our Coverage of the Parkland Florida School Shooting

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6 Things You Can Do Right Now to Fight for Gun-Control

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On Friday morning, at least ten people were killed during a shooting at Santa Fe High School outside of Houston, Texas. The massacre came only three months after the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which prompted many people (including student survivors of the massacre) to join the fight for stricter gun-control laws.

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From coast to coast, thousands of Americans showed up in orange on June 3-5, 2022 to honor survivors and build community with others working to end gun violence.

On January 21, 2013, Hadiya Pendleton marched in President Obama's second inaugural parade. One week later, Hadiya was shot and killed on a playground in Chicago. Soon after this tragedy, Hadiya's friends commemorated her life by wearing orange, the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others. Wear Orange is now observed every June. Thousands of people wear the color orange to honor Hadiya and the more than 40,000 people who are killed with guns and approximately 85,000 who are shot and wounded every year.

Wear Orange isn't possible without collaboration. In addition to thousands of people participating across the country, partners amplify gun violence awareness to new audiences.

learn more

This year, we once again unite in our call to end gun violence as we come together for Wear Orange. We honor the communities shattered by gun violence alongside the more than 110 people who are shot and killed, and hundreds more who are wounded, every day in our country. Together, we call for meaningful action to save lives.

We should not have to live in fear that gunfire can ring out at any moment, whether it's at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, while grocery shopping at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, a party in San Bernardino, or graduations across the country. We deserve more. Raise awareness by participating in Wear Orange online and in your community.

learn more

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From coast to coast, thousands of Americans showed up in orange on June 3-5, 2022 to honor survivors and build community with others working to end gun violence. On January 21, 2013, Hadiya Pendleton marched in President Obama's second inaugural parade. One week later, Hadiya was shot and killed on a playground in Chicago.

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Check out this website and identify who they are and what they stand for. Link it to "End Family Fire".

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The Gun Safety Alliance is a group of business leaders and concerned citizens from across every industry-a "coalition of the willing"-working together to propel cultural change and prevent unnecessary gun deaths in the United States.

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Browse the website and discover facts, numbers and testimonies from people involved in this project

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I pledge to side with safety and promote responsible gun ownership in the home. #EndFamilyFire