Dear John,
We are living in dangerous and uncertain times. While our healthcare workers, neighbors and loved ones are joining together in the fight against COVID-19, the president is using hateful rhetoric to divide our country.
As I warned in my book, “Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea,” over a decade ago, insurrectionism is the idea that armed citizens have the right to take matters into their own hands and take up arms against whatever they define as an oppressive government.
Promoted by the gun lobby and far-right extremists, this rhetoric is the same ideology that was used by violent extremists in the 1990s at Waco, Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City. Armed citizens told their fellow Americans: You don’t just need a gun for home protection; it is your duty to stockpile weapons to take action against a tyrannical American government.
This harmful mentality is encouraging Americans to use their guns to harass healthcare workers and defy government stay-at-home orders that are designed to keep us safe.
That isn’t democracy; it is mob rule. And paradoxically, it is the man in the Oval Office who is encouraging it.
We need your support now more than ever to fight against this violence! Please make a donation today to stand against violent insurrectionism and Donald Trump’s hateful, and harmful, rhetoric.
Thank you,
Josh Horwitz
Executive Director
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
