John, 

On this day two years ago, a white supremacist used an AK-47 – a weapon of war – to open fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 23 people in an attack against the Latinx community.

This should have been a normal day for El Paso – families should have come together at the dinner table that night after a quick, routine shopping trip. Instead, 23 people – including children and parents – took their last breaths, and a community was left forever scarred.

What's even sadder is that this tragedy isn't an isolated incident. This shooting in El Paso happened just days after a gunman used an assault weapon in Gilroy, California to murder innocent bystanders – and there's been far more lives lost to assault weapons since this horrifying week in 2019.

But there's hope: These tragedies are preventable – and we know what we have to do to stop them. To save lives from gun violence, the U.S. has to ban assault weapons – like New Zealand did just weeks after the mass shooting in Christchurch. The NRA and its bought-and-paid-for politicians have blocked us for years, but we finally have gun safety champions in the White House and Congress. Now, we just need to urge them to act.

That's where you come in, John. I need 10,000 people to sign on to our urgent petition calling on Congress to ban assault weapons and end our country's gun violence epidemic – and I'm counting on you to be one of them. Please, add your name before our petition closes at 11:59 p.m. tonight:

Will you call on Congress to finally BAN assault weapons? Every signature gets us a little more leverage in this fight to save lives – but we're still missing your name.

As a gun violence survivor myself, I can empathize with the anguish that the El Paso community must feel today – and my heart goes out to all those impacted by this anniversary. Together, we'll make sure that tragedies like this one never happen again. 

Thanks for everything you do,

Liz Dunning
Gun Violence Survivor & VP of Development, Brady