These Students Get It: Announcing the Winners of our 2019 National High School Essay Contest A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence Over the past 10 days, we’ve been receiving acknowledgements to the congratulatory notices that we sent to the winners of our 2019 Americans Against Gun Violence National High School Essay Contest. The last acknowledgement from one of our top 12 winners came in on Thursday. I was looking forward to [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence High school students attending a vigil in the school auditorium on the evening after the mass shooting on the campus of the STEM* charter school in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, disrupted the program after U.S. Senator Michael Bennett (D-Colorado) and U.S. Representative Jason Crow (D-Colorado) spoke concerning the need for stronger gun laws to prevent such tragedies from recurring.[i] Prior to the comments by the congressmen, [...]

 The Campus Mass Shooting that Barely Made the News A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence   On the evening of Tuesday, April 30, a former student, 22 year old Trystan Terrell, walked into a class at the University of North Carolina’s Charlotte campus and opened fire with a handgun, killing two students and wounding four others. According to first hand reports, one of the students who was killed in the attack, [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence concerning our 2019 High School Essay Contest “The Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have ‘some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.”” I’m pleased to announce that the 2019 Americans Against Gun Violence High School Essay Contest is now open for submissions from high school students in the United States and [...]

"What can we do to prevent these mass shootings?" A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence   A friend sent me an email the day after the mass shooting on November 7 at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, California. He asked: "Bill, what can we do to prevent these mass shootings?" I replied: "It's simple, Jim. We need to adopt stringent gun control laws in the United States comparable [...]

Responding to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Mass Shooting: Condemning Anti-Semitism is Not Enough A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence On Saturday, October 27, a gunman armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and three handguns entered a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during worship services and killed 11 people and wounded at least six others before being shot by police and taken into custody. The gunman, 46 year old Robert Bowers, had posted rabidly [...]

Keynote Address by Bill Durston, MD President, Americans Against Gun Violence At the AfriPeace Foundation Annual Benefit Dinner Sacramento, California, October 13, 2018   I’d like to thank Dr. Uwazie for the honor of being invited to speak this evening and also for the work that he and his colleagues do through the AfriPeace Foundation. The late South African leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Nelson Mandela, once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon [...]

Calling Out Kavanaugh... For his Hypocrisy on Gun Control and the Second Amendment   A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence In his opening statement at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, sought to portray himself as a humble servant of the U.S. Constitution. He stated: A judge must be independent and interpret the law, not make the [...]

Open Carry Is Coming Soon...Unless We Act Now A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence   Unless we act now, open carry of loaded guns is coming soon to a theater near you – and to restaurants, grocery stores, parks, sidewalks, streets, and other public places as well. If you live in a state like Alaska, Alabama, Louisiana, or Texas that already allows open carry of loaded firearms in most public places, [...]

“Why Do I have To March For My Life?” And Other Winning Essays in the 2018 Americans Against Gun Violence National High School Essay Contest A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence In March of this year, we announced our first annual Americans Against Gun Violence National High School Essay Contest, open to all high school students in the United States and its territories. The prompt for the contest was a statement [...]