Americans Against Gun Violence extends heartfelt sympathy to the friends, family, and fellow synagogue members of the victims who were killed in the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on October 17, 2018. We also send sincere wishes for a prompt and complete recovery to the victims who were wounded. We condemn the shooting and the anti-Semitism that motivated it in the strongest terms – but we don’t stop there.

Americans Against Gun Violence calls for the urgent adoption of stringent gun control laws in the United States comparable to the laws that have long been in effect in every other high income democratic country of the world – countries in which mass shootings are rare or non-existent, and in which the average rate of gun homicide is 25 times lower than in our own country. Such laws include stringent restrictions, if not complete bans, on civilian ownership of handguns and all automatic and semi-automatic rifles. Until we adopt such laws, we shouldn’t be satisfied with condemning the motivation behind horrific mass shootings. Rather, we should ask ourselves why we don’t take the obvious steps necessary to prevent them.