Fellow Advocate, 

As my wife and I prepare our daughter to start school this fall, I have one consistent, haunting thought distracting me from picking out backpacks and pouring over the kindergarten curriculum. Will my daughter, and all Pennsylvania schoolchildren, be safe from gun violence this year?

While we worry about our children, the gun lobby and their allies dream up fantasy “solutions” that do nothing to reduce actual gun violence. Armed guards in schools, metal detectors, and bulletproof backpacks are jarring, and skirt around the real issue: unfettered access to deadly weapons due to weak gun laws.

Here at CeaseFirePA, we always push for proactive solutions that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. And today, we’re officially launching the 2024 Keep Kids Safe at School Campaign. This is a two month, multi-pronged campaign to shift the narrative on what actually keeps school zones safe. We will be collecting stories, hosting roundtable discussions with expert panelists throughout Pennsylvania, and doing major press engagement– all with the common goal of educating our legislators and the public about policies that can actually stop gun violence in schools. 

Will you join this campaign’s launch by sending a message to your state legislators demanding they pass bipartisan legislation to protect our students, teachers, and communities this school year and beyond?

It’s not enough to just say we are against gun violence in schools. We need to make a case to our leaders for specific legislation that will make a real life reduction in school violence across our Commonwealth. Therefore, we are demanding: 

Parents like us should be worrying about grades, sports, and first crushes, not the crushing weight of our gun violence crisis. It’s our elected leaders’ job to consider and pass legislation that will protect all of us, but most importantly our children. We need to remind them of that, so we created this petition to channel our advocacy and demand they do the people’s work. Will you sign on and urge  your State Representative and Senator Nikil Saval to support the above legislative package?

For safer schools and communities,

Adam Garber
Executive Director
CeaseFirePA