It only takes a passing glance at news in the past several years to know that America has developed a big problem with mass murder, suicide, and homicide. Indeed, death by firearms has become the LEADING cause of death for young people between the ages of 1 and 19 in the United States (The New England Journal of Medicine). We have witnessed and endured too much already. This year, the House of Representatives has voted for several significant gun safety measures such as H.R.7910, the Protecting Our Kids Act, while Senators passed the Bipartisan Gun Safety Act on June 23rd, which contains several big steps in the right direction. As responsible adults and caring neighbors, we ask for the Senate to also vote on these measures to ensure safety for all, while maintaining the freedom of law-abiding citizens to retain their gun ownership.

• A universal background check. Supported by 88% of Americans polled by Morning Consult and Politico in May 2022. In a 2018 Gallup poll, 92% favored requiring background checks for all gun sales while 7% opposed
• Provide ample funding to research causes of mass shootings and other gun-related deaths
• Direct school safety funding to reducing isolation in youth, as well as programs teaching critical thinking skills for evaluating radical online claims - such as the white supremacy that radicalized the Buffalo shooter in May
• Implement federal red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection orders - authorizing courts to temporarily prevent people in crisis from accessing firearms by request from family, friends, or law enforcement.
• Incentivize safe home storage for guns with tax refunds and similar - a 2021 study of child suicide found that suicide by gun was almost always in houses with unsafe storage
• Ban automatic-fire capable guns (i.e. fires more than one round per trigger pull - machine guns, etc.). The Morning Consult and Politico survey had 67% of respondents in support of an “assault-style weapons” ban

Photo "At the playground" by mripp is licensed under CC BY 2.0.