Gun Violence Survivors, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action Volunteers are Available for Interviews
NEW YORK — Everytown for Gun Safety, and Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, Everytown’s grassroots networks, released the following statements after a weekend of gun violence. Just days after a mass shooting in Indianapolis in which a shooter killed eight people and wounded several more at a FedEx facility, there was a rash of gun violence across the country. Over the weekend, six people were shot, 3 fatally, in a shooting at a tavern in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In Austin, Texas, three people were killed after an apparent “domestic situation” — the suspect of which is an ex-sheriff’s detective. In Columbus, Ohio, six people were shot, one fatally in a drive-by shooting at vigil for a gun violence victim. In LaPlace, Louisiana six people were shot and wounded at a 12-year-old’s birthday party. In Omaha, Nebraska there was a shooting at the Westroads mall in which one person was fatally shot and one was wounded. In Chicago, 24 people were shot, three fatally, in gun violence across the city.
Every day in the U.S. more than 100 people are shot and killed and 230 are wounded. This weekend — as well as the rash of mass shootings, police shootings, and city gun violence that is disproportionately killing Black, Latinx, and trans people — has been another painful reminder of how urgent our nation’s gun violence crisis is.
“America’s gun violence crisis is not a series of discrete tragedies — it is an epidemic of daily shootings that is holding our nation at constant gunpoint,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “This is a life-or-death issue, not a right-or-left issue, and it is time for lawmakers in both the U.S. Senate and state houses across the country to step up and pass desperately needed gun safety laws.”
“These senseless shootings and near-constant gun violence are painful reminders of our weak and inadequate gun laws, which are a result of allowing the gun industry to write our gun laws for the last several decades,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action. “We can’t and won’t accept this gun violence as being our American normal. We need federal action on gun safety from the Senate, and we need it now.”
“Young people in this country have been born and raised in the midst of our gun violence epidemic,” said Emily Cole, a volunteer with Students Demand Action in Indiana and Survivor Fellow with the Everytown Survivor Network. “We have seen gun violence on the news and in our communities, schools, and families. We have been waiting our whole lives for federal action on gun safety. The time for just thoughts and prayers has passed. We can’t wait a minute more for action from our leaders at every level.”
As gun violence continues to devastate communities across the country, lawmakers on every level must take action to save lives:
- The U.S. Senate has an opportunity to pass life-saving background check legislation — something that gun violence survivors, Moms Demand Action, and Student Demand Action volunteers have called for at events across the country during their “Road Trip for Background Checks.”
- State lawmakers can follow the lead of states like Virginia which passed bills to close the Charleston loophole and Maryland which enacted a law to require background checks on all gun sales and passed a suite of police accountability measures in an effort to prevent police violence.
- States should reject efforts to weaken gun laws — Texas and Louisiana lawmakers should follow the lead of Indiana and put a stop to dangerous permitless carry legislation. And states like Missouri, Alabama, and Idaho should follow Wyoming’s lead and reject extreme efforts to nullify federal gun laws and punish local law enforcement for doing their jobs.
- Mayors can join the ranks of Mayors Against Illegal Guns like Boulder Mayor Sam Weaver did following the mass shooting at a Boulder grocery store.