Dear John, It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years since Michael Kennedy and I co-founded Stop Handgun Violence. Sadly, my close friend Michael isn’t here to celebrate what we started, but I can say with absolute certainly that what we’ve all done together over the past 25 years, is one of the my proudest accomplishments of my life. Since 1994, Stop Handgun Violence has been the lead advocate for passage of the most effective gun laws in the Nation. We’ve proven the gun lobby’s worst nightmare, gun laws save lives without banning most guns. In fact, we’ve reduced the gun death rate by 40% and urban Massachusetts now consistently has the lowest gun death rate in the continental United States! We started by changing the historically polarized gun debate with our provocative Mass Pike billboard campaigns and then successfully worked on a bipartisan basis to enact commonsense gun laws and regulations including: - first in the nation gun manufacturer consumer safety standards for all guns sold in the Commonwealth
- police chief discretion for renewable gun licensing
- mandatory gun safety training
- safe storage requirements
- a permanent ban on military style assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazine
All of which have made Massachusetts the safest state in the nation with regard to gun violence and a national model for gun violence prevention. On October 24th we’ll celebrate our significant past success and redouble our continued efforts to further reduce the daily 100 gun deaths, 150 plus injuries and mass shootings that now occur every single day in America. From today until our 25th anniversary party, I will match all donations up to a total of $25,000.00. PLEASE join me and double your impact today. Please click to donate below and thank you so much for your continued support! Best regards and I hope to see you on October 24th. John | 
