The following represents a joint statement from Peace House and Vision Quilt, underscoring the importance of addressing the root causes of the shooting disasters including the lethal shootings in Texas and New York this week.
In view of the many massacres that have been mounting across the country, including the recent ones in Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX, Peace House and Vision Quilt in Ashland, Oregon, offer our condolences to the citizens and families in the cities of Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX who have suffered the results of unconscionable acts of violence. They are only the most recent ones in a long stream of sickening and twisted attacks on innocent, precious lives.
We deplore the lack of gun safety legislation and purchasing requirements that make everything from handguns to assault weapons so highly available to customers in the United States, without adequate enforcement and controls.
The lack of uniform gun safety laws, including background checks and red-flag laws, as well as follow-up by law enforcement, makes gun and assault weapon access far too accessible and can especially encourage the fantasies of those with mental and emotional problems to act out their frustration, desire for revenge or their need to assert their power in ways that are unacceptable to our fellow citizens. We urge the passage of laws that will protect both distressed shooters (from themselves) and citizens who can become their targets.
We are outraged that while 90 percent of the U.S. population is anxious to see this kind of legislation from our House and Senate in Washington, D.C., there are 50 Republicans and 2 Democrats that have been holding up House or Representatives’ legislation already in the pipeline for over a year. The National Rifle Association lobby in D.C is credited with placing heavy pressure on Leader McConnell and the GOP to stonewall any changes in existing laws, in an effort to avoid further barriers to gun sales.
We join the many organizations across the country that are dedicated to implementing sane and universal gun safety laws, including background checks and a limit to assault rifle access. We believe there are plenty of methods to develop and enhance mental health care and conflict resolution models to handle the intense reactions shooters are acting out through violence.
We urge our readership to come together, speak out and send your demands for enhanced gun safety laws to leaders at all levels of government.
Let’s Get Gun Safety on the Ballot in Oregon this Fall
From Lift Every Voice:
There are things we can do–we must do. Right now in Oregon, a small organization called Lift Every Voice Oregon (LEVO) is fighting to place an initiative petition called IP 17 on the November 2022 ballot. IP 17 requires people who want to buy a gun to acquire a license first. The licensing process requires appearing before a licensing agent, completing hands-on firearm training as well as classroom training, and completing a background check. (No more illegal buying a gun through a loophole.) IP 17 also limits ammunition magazine size to 10 rounds. (People hunting large game like elk in Oregon are limited to 5 rounds. Shooters hunting people have no ammunition limit. We show more compassion to elk than to a classroom full of kids.)
Please consider writing to President Biden TODAY to ask him to urge the Senate to pass the legislation for safe gun laws immediately. Follow this link: https://www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/write-or-call/
Leadership Across the Board: A Response to Uvalde
Dramatic and deeply felt leadership for gun safety has been widespread since an 18 year old sole gunman entered an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. NPR reports that 21 people were killed ion Tuesday. President Biden, several Democratic senators and more than forty groups are working nationally and in individual states to improve gun safety regulations. This is on top of notable public figures, from news commentators, including several in the major outlets, to NBA Coach Mike Kerr and Marjorie Stonewall Jackson, to massacre survivor David Hogg.
Senator Chris Murphy (D) Conn. gave an impassioned challenge on the Senate floor the day of the Uvalde massacre repeating many times:
“What are we doing?” Murphy declared from the Senate Floor. “Why are we here??”
The response was loud and clear from Hogg during an interview with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC.
“Do one thing,” Hogg implored, repeatedly. “Do just one thing….pass universal background checks.”
Mike Kerr, famous NBA coach and longtime gun safety advocate whose father was assassinated in a shooting in Beirut in 1984, referenced a bill known as the Bipartisan Background Checks Act. The Act would expand federal background checks required for gun purchases. He was in no mood to talk basketball despite an impending team playoff.
Kerr and David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland, Florida high school massacre and founder of March for Our Lives, used the opportunities for media coverage that helped to articulate widespread moral outrage. Their message plead for sanity, humanizing the plight of grieving families and slaughtered shooting victims from far too many similar events.
Originating in Ashland, Vision Quilt has strong roots in the City of Oakland, CA creating alternatives to violence.
Peace House is a forty-year-old nonprofit that advocates for structural nonviolence and alternatives to war, social injustice, racism and food insufficiency.
