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Hi,
Will you sign the petition demanding stronger gun control laws now?
Americans make up 4.4 percent of the world’s population—but own 42% of the guns.1
Another mass shooting, this one in Indianapolis, shows the urgent need to act. Ten people were shot dead while grocery shopping on a Monday afternoon in Boulder. That was just days after a massacre in Atlanta targeting Asian women massage workers left eight people dead.
The US has seen dozens of mass shootings in the last five years alone. In most of these cases, the guns used were purchased legally through a background check.2 This is an epidemic of gun violence, and existing gun laws have done nothing to curb it.
As long as the filibuster is in place, any gun control bill needs 60 votes to pass the Senate—an extremely unlikely feat given the stubborn stance Republicans like Mitch McConnell have long held against firearm restrictions. Senate Democrats need to abolish the filibuster and pass gun control legislation on their own. And we don't need another list of victims to tell us why.
In early March, House Democrats passed two bills proposing to extend background checks to all gun buyers and enforcing FBI vetting of those flagged by the background check system. The bills were met with firm opposition on the Senate floor, where Republicans insisted that gun violence needs to be met with more policing, not tighter laws.
But recent polling shows that 71% of Americans—including half of Republicans—support a ban on high capacity ammunition weapons.3 In addition to universal background checks, restrictions on those with violent misdemeanor records, and red flag laws, reforms would crack down on the increasing popularity of "ghost guns," which are effectively guns sold as partial kits and thus don’t have to adhere to regulation and background checks.
In the first months of 2021, more than 10,000 people have been murdered at gunpoint. Last week, President Biden spoke out in support of targeting the distribution of ghost guns and enforcing stronger gun regulation, calling the US gun violence epidemic an "international embarrassment."4
Now, we need the legislation. This message can’t be clearer than it is right now: our current gun laws are failing, and Democrats need to pass extensive restrictions on deadly weapons now.
Thanks for taking action,
Tara and the team at Demand Progress
Sources:
1. New York Times, "Why Does the U.S. Have So Many Mass Shootings? Research Is Clear: Guns." November 7, 2017.
2. New York Times, "How They Got Their Guns," October 3, 2015.
3. Pew Research, "Stricter gun laws have gained support in US since 2017," October 16, 2019.
4. New York Times, "Biden Takes Initial Steps to Address Gun Violence," April 8, 2021.
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