Americans Against Gun Violence extends sincere condolences and wishes for a prompt and complete recovery to all the victims of the mass shooting that occurred at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia this morning. Preliminary reports indicate that at least four people, including U.S. Representative Steve Scalise, were wounded in an attack by a lone gunman as members of the Republican Party and their staff were practicing for an annual charity softball game against members of the Democratic Party.
The mass shooting in Virginia today, which comes just two days after the one year anniversary of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history – the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, in which 49 people were killed and 58 injured – demonstrates that no one in the United States is safe from the threat of gun violence.
Americans Against Gun Violence concurs with the following statement by a U.S. senator from Connecticut:

Pious condolences will no longer suffice….Quarter measures and half measures will no longer suffice….The time has now come that we must enact stringent gun control legislation comparable to the legislation in force in virtually every civilized country of the world.

Unfortunately, however, this statement was made 49 years ago by the late Senator Thomas Dodd, following the assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. In the intervening 49 years, Congress has failed to enact the stringent gun control legislation that Senator Dodd called for, and as a result, more U.S. civilians have been killed by guns than all the U.S. soldiers killed in all the wars in which the United States has ever been involved.
We are deeply saddened by the mass shooting that occurred in Virginia this morning, but we hope that it will provide the impetus necessary for all members of Congress to work together toward the adoption of definitive gun control laws in the United States comparable to the laws that have long been in place in every other high income democratic country of the world – countries in which mass shootings are rare or non-existent, and in which overall rates of gun violence are far lower than in the United States.