From CeaseFirePA (http://www.ceasefirepa.org):
A year ago we watched in horror as a gunman used a AK-47 style rifle to kill 23 people and injure 23 others in El Paso, Texas. The next day a different killer used a modified assault rifle to kill nine in Dayton, Ohio.
These back-to-back shootings should have been enough to motivate the most callous elected official to stop the sale of these weapons of war. But instead, nothing happened in Congress.
The time for waiting is over. Join now in demanding Congress pass an assault weapons ban at https://ceasefirepa.salsalabs.org/assaultweapons1/index.html.
It wasn’t always this way. In 1994 Congress passed a federal assault weapons ban which prohibited the production, sale, transfer, import or possession of semi-automatic assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. While in place, the average number of deaths in gun massacres fell by nearly 20 percent.¹
But then Congress let the ban expire in 2004. And as firearm manufacturers flooded the country with even more lethal weapons, gun fatalities rapidly climbed again. Over the last five years the average deaths at gun massacres are nearly double what they were when the law was in effect.
Tell you member of Congress: Pass a new assault weapons ban today.
Simply put: a new assault weapons ban would save lives. It likely could have prevented or limited the fatalities at shootings like the ones in El Paso and Dayton.
A strong majority of Americans support banning these dangerous weapons but Congress has done nothing.² And let’s be clear, these weapons purpose is to kill as many humans as possible in the shortest amount of time.
We can’t go back and change what happened in El Paso a year ago, but we can honor the lost and wounded with action. We can take steps to prevent this from happening again.
¹John J. Donohue III and Theodora Boulouta, Stanford Law Blogs, “The Assault Weapons Ban Saved Lives”, October 15, 2019.
²Frank Newport, Gallup, “Analyzing Surveys on Banning Assault Weapons”, November 14, 2019.
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