From CeaseFirePA (http://www.ceasefirepa.org):
“It’s Thursday in America.”
This is how I responded when asked about the most recent mass shooting in America. A man with two assault rifles had killed 8 people overnight in a FedEx facility.¹
Lately, we’ve been waking up to repeated national coverage of mass shootings, each one a new episode of carnage and another community torn apart. There have been 156 mass shootings in 2021 alone, and we’re not even halfway through the year.²
These are dark times— but they don’t have to last forever. We can honor the memories of those we’ve lost by taking action to prevent future mass shootings. The first step? Banning weapons of war from our streets.
The Senate has introduced legislation that would ban assault weapons, including the semi-automatic rifles used in some of the recent and deadliest American mass shootings.³ From Boulder to Parkland to the Tree of Life Synagogue, the mass shooters had a common approach: they used assault weapons to take lives. Go to https://ceasefirepa.salsalabs.org/toomeyassaultweaponsban2021/index.html and tell Senator Toomey to support this ban and save lives not just in Pennsylvania, but across the United States.
The Assault Weapons Ban of 2021 (S 736) would ban the purchase of military-style firearms including semi-automatic rifles, the weapon of choice for mass shooters. It would reinstate and expand the successful 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, written by then-senator and now our current president, Joe Biden.
Senator Toomey is one of the few Senate Republicans with a history of supporting gun safety legislation, and so far not a single Republican Senator has signed onto this bill. Senator Toomey could be the first Republican to support this effort, making history in ending the carnage of mass shootings in the United States.
Pennsylvania was the tipping point in sending a gun safety advocate to the White House. Now, we can be the tipping point in passing a historic ban on assault weapons in our communities.
¹Kesslen, Ben. “Gunman in FedEx shooting legally purchased assault rifles used in attack, police say.” April 18 2021, NBC News.
²https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
³https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?id=0763FFE7-8E3F-4F57-B1C7-E09E161C83D7
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