Gun Violence Prevention Advocate,
The personal stories of gun violence that you shared with us provide example after example of why we need to pass the Common Agenda to End Gun Violence1 – and why we need you to keep calling your State Reps until the House holds final votes as soon as next week.
We’re fighting for Laurel and the young boys she mentored as a former Cub Scout Den Leader in the Philadelphia suburbs decades ago. Laurel was appalled to learn that 88 of the 90 boys in her group had access to gun cabinets. Her alerts to other adults were disregarded. Years later, when she connected with the same group who were then 19 years old and in college, the young men admitted that as kids they used to regularly play with their parents’ guns when their parents weren’t home.
Thankfully those boys were not harmed or killed, but they are the exception. Every year, approximately 118 children die by guns in Pennsylvania, with many more becoming seriously injured.2 A strong safe storage law – a core pillar of our Common Agenda to End Gun Violence – could have prevented these risks and tragedies.
