Hello John,
Over the past few months, the Trump team has been (not so quietly) unwinding more federal firearm oversight. The ATF, the federal agency in charge of enforcing our country’s gun laws, just made one of the biggest changes to gun policy in decades. Over the past few months, it has quietly rolled back more than three dozen rules that were meant to keep guns out of dangerous situations. This week, that story finally broke into the open, and we think you deserve the no-nonsense version of what’s happening.
As it stands, it’s now harder to hold firearm dealers accountable when they break the law, easier for gun show and online sellers to skip background checks, and easier for some people with a history of serious mental illness to legally buy a firearm. Just this past Friday, the agency also did away with fingerprinting requirements for certain gun purchases. And on Wednesday, the Justice Department sued California and Virginia, two states with strong gun safety laws, just hours after those laws took effect. This is not a handful of small tweaks. It is a fast, coordinated effort to undo years of progress at both the federal and state level.
Here's the part I really want you to sit with. Alongside all of this, the administration also shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and canceled the Surgeon General's official warning that gun violence is a public health crisis. That means it's not just that buying a gun got easier in dozens of small ways. The federal government is trying to stop treating gun violence like the crisis we all know it to be.
We are currently living through an administration that is putting dangerous deregulation into our communities, at a time when we have made so much progress. My ask for you today is to recommit some of your energy into the gun violence prevention movement with us. Sign our petition below to put your name behind that recommitment, and to demand Congress hold hearings on this rollback before more damage is done. Together, we will push back on the dangerous deregulation and harmful rhetoric. But that's only possible with you by our side.
