Children should feel safe in their schools — not fear gunfire.

Yet across America, families continue to be shattered by preventable acts of gun violence. Parents send their children to school expecting them to come home safely. Teachers walk into classrooms expecting to teach. Students deserve the opportunity to learn, grow, and dream about their futures without wondering whether they will survive the school day.

Thoughts and prayers alone are not enough. Prayer may give families strength, but our communities also need action, accountability, prevention, and meaningful solutions.

This is not about taking rights away from responsible gun owners. It is about recognizing that with rights come responsibilities—and that protecting innocent lives must be a priority.

We, the undersigned, demand that lawmakers at the local, state, and federal levels take meaningful action by:

1. Enacting Universal Background Checks
Close gaps that allow individuals who are legally prohibited from possessing firearms to obtain them through private sales, gun shows, or other avenues.

2. Passing and Enforcing Safe Storage Laws
Require firearms to be stored securely and responsibly, particularly in homes where children or other vulnerable individuals are present. A child should never be able to access an unsecured firearm.

3. Strengthening Extreme Risk Protection Laws
Create appropriate legal processes that allow firearms to be temporarily removed from individuals who pose a serious and credible risk of harming themselves or others, while protecting due-process rights.

4. Addressing Access to Assault-Style Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines
Lawmakers should examine whether additional restrictions are necessary on weapons and accessories that can dramatically increase the number of people harmed during mass shootings.

5. Investing in School Safety
Provide schools with the resources necessary to implement evidence-based security measures, threat-assessment programs, emergency preparedness, violence-prevention initiatives, and safe reporting systems.

6. Expand Mental Health and Crisis-Intervention Resources
Children, families, and communities need access to affordable mental-health services, counseling, crisis intervention, and early support—not only after tragedy occurs, but before someone reaches a point of crisis.

7. Strengthen Violence-Prevention Programs
Invest in evidence-based community programs that address youth violence, conflict resolution, bullying, trauma, domestic violence, and other factors that can contribute to violent behavior.

8. Keep Firearms Out of the Hands of Children
Increase education and accountability surrounding firearm safety. Parents, guardians, and firearm owners must understand the responsibility that comes with keeping a firearm in a home where children may be present.

9. Improve Threat Reporting and Intervention
Students, educators, parents, and community members should have safe and accessible ways to report credible threats without fear of retaliation. Reports must be taken seriously and investigated appropriately.

10. Support Families and Survivors of Gun Violence
Families who lose loved ones—and survivors who carry physical and emotional scars—deserve access to counseling, victim services, financial assistance, and long-term support.

11. Demand Transparency and Accountability
When a serious threat is reported or a preventable failure occurs, communities deserve answers. Government agencies and institutions must be willing to identify failures, learn from them, and make necessary changes.

12. Protect Children From Gun Violence Beyond the Classroom
Our responsibility cannot end at the school doors. Children deserve safe homes, neighborhoods, parks, places of worship, community centers, and public spaces.

This Is Bigger Than Politics

We recognize that Americans hold different opinions about firearms, gun ownership, constitutional rights, and public safety. But there should be common ground on one fundamental principle:

Children should not have to die for us to decide that action is necessary.

We should not wait for another school shooting before having the conversation again. We should not wait for another family to receive a devastating phone call. We should not accept mass shootings, accidental shootings, youth gun violence, or preventable firearm deaths as simply the price of living in America.

Every day of inaction costs lives. Every delay puts children and communities at risk.

We call on our elected officials to put public safety before politics, courage before excuses, and children before special interests.

We call on parents, educators, community leaders, responsible firearm owners, advocates, and concerned citizens to join this conversation and demand solutions that protect both our communities and the rights of responsible citizens.

Our children deserve to grow up believing that tomorrow is waiting for them.

They deserve classrooms where they can learn instead of hide.

They deserve communities where they can play instead of fear.

They deserve to come home.

Together, we rise for change.
Together, we demand action.
Together, we can do better.

🖊️ Sign this petition to protect our children and demand meaningful action to end the cycle of preventable gun violence.

Sign. Share. Speak up. Our children’s lives are worth the effort.