Back story:

On Wednesday, June 8th, a house committee heard testimonies from survivors and the bereaved of the recent gun violence tragedies in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York. The testimonies included that of an Uvalde child who covered herself in blood so the killer would think she was dead, Uvalde’s pediatrician who witnessed the results of the carnage, the mother of a Buffalo victim who has several wounds and will have shrapnel in his body for the rest of his life, and the parents of a child who was murdered in Uvalde, begging our legislators for gun violence prevention. 

That same day, the House of Representatives passed a bill with a vote of 223 to 204 to raise the purchasing age for semi-automatic weapons as well as limiting magazine capacity to no more than 15 bullets. There IS NOT enough support in the senate for this bill to be signed into law.

Representative Randy Feenstra of Iowa’s fourth district was one of the 204 members to vote no to this bill. Instead, he proposes schools protect themselves. We will deliver this petition to Representative Feenstra when we can arrange a meeting at his Iowa office. 

Petition:

Representative Feenstra,

Whether you realize it or not, your current solution to gun violence is victim blaming. The Stop II Act of 2022, that you helped bring forward, which focuses on strengthening security at schools as well as training children and teachers, is MORE OF THE SAME. Any school teacher or student can tell you we already spend a disconcerting amount of time learning how to avoid getting killed at school. If you really do grieve the lives lost, and if you really do desire to protect our children, then we implore you to introduce or support legislation that actually addresses gun violence.

No matter how much you turn our schools into prisons, violent people with assault weapons WILL find a way to murder innocents. We need to keep guns out of the hands of people who would harm humans with them and assault weapons out of civilian hands, PERIOD. Besides, protecting schools will not prevent gun deaths by suicide - the highest amount of gun deaths - or gun violence at:

• the grocery store 
• the movie theater
• churches 
• music festivals
•  our streets

just to name a few places where gun violence has happened recently.

We are tired of hearing the excuse that criminals will find guns no matter how many laws we have. THAT IS JUST FALSE. The United States far exceeds any other high income country in gun deaths, and if we look at those country’s gun laws, we can see that in many cases, guns are not widely available to their citizens. But even Austria, which is seen as the loosest on gun laws in Europe, has more gun violence prevention than many US states.

As the constituents of Iowa’s 4th district, we are asking for the following common sense federal laws (as researched and drafted by March For Our Lives) to prevent gun violence:

1. A ban or tight regulations on assault weapons. They were designed to kill the highest amount of PEOPLE in the lowest amount of time without being a fully automatic weapon. There is no need for them to be in the hands of civilians. We’ve decided as a society to highly regulate machine guns, for instance. It is time to get out of denial about the dangers assault weapons pose to our society,
2. A ban on high capacity magazines, placing the cap at 10 or 15 rounds of ammunition,
3. A required national licensing and registry system that promotes responsible gun ownership, including background checks, in-person interviews, and rigorous gun safety training. License renewal would be required annually,
4. A limit of one firearm purchase per month,
5. Policies to disarm gun owners who pose a harm risk to themselves or others,
6. Mandatory 10 day waiting periods, when purchasing fire arms, to prevent homicides and suicides, 
7. A prohibition on any and all online firearm and ammunition sales or transfers, including gun parts,
8. A requirement to safely store firearms, including implementing national standards for locking devices on guns,
9. A requirement to report guns that are lost or stolen to local law enforcement within 72 hours,
10. Ensure that firearms are expressly regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and
11. A national gun buy-back and disposal program.

We say NO MORE gun violence, and we mean it. We refuse to hand this issue over to a little girl who had to lay in her friend's blood and wait over an hour for the police to arrive.