Friend,

Every single year, over one hundred Pennsylvania kids die needlessly, many because adults fail to lock away their firearms. We know that legislation to actually require safe gun storage around kids would save lives, but with kids' lives at risk from school shootings we cannot wait for the General Assembly to act. 

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education, Noe Ortega, doesn’t have to wait to help schools and parents save kids' lives. He can provide guidance to school boards and school district administrators on the latest research and on strategies to improve student learning, safety, and health. 

Add your name to our petition: “A safe student is a learning student. Schools can help secure firearms.”

Secretary Ortega should communicate with school districts the dangers of unsecured guns on suicide attempts, mass shootings, and accidental gun usage that ends in injury or death. He should call on school boards to track these incidents of unsecured guns and inevitable violence, so we can put even more pressure on the General Assembly to take legislative action. 

We know that with you involved, he will likely take action.

Our school boards and school district administrators across Pennsylvania make monumental policy decisions every day that impact our kids and wider school communities. Public messaging about safe gun storage will truly save lives. We need Secretary Ortega to take action so that in the coming months, school boards and administrators will educate parents with a sense of urgency.

It’s easy to talk about numbers, but here is what is really at stake. Across the country, the second leading cause of death for kids is gun violence. That’s gun suicides, accidental shootings, interpersonal violence, gun violence in neighborhoods, and the constant toll of mass shootings in schools and public spaces. A flurry of bullets, or the fear of it in the future, are a constant presence in the lives of Pennsylvania children. For a parent who has lost a child simply because a gun wasn’t locked up, the grief is endless torture. We must take action right now to help gun owners take more responsibility in their gun ownership. 

Thank you for your continued advocacy.

Adam Garber 
Executive Director
CeaseFirePA