Announcing the Opening of our 2021 National High School Essay Contest - with a mixture of some pleasure and great concern A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence   It's with a mixture of some pleasure and also great concern that I'm posting this message to announce that our 2021 Americans Against Gun Violence National High School Essay Contest is now open to all U.S. high school students. I'm pleased that this is the [...]

The Holiday Season Has Started Off With A "Bang" - actually, with multiple bangs A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence December 1, 2020   During the four day period from the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, November 26, through Sunday, November 29, there were eight mass shootings in the United States,[1] beginning with a shooting in Henderson, Nevada, on Thanksgiving morning, committed by a couple who drove through the city shooting randomly [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence November 9, 2020 With the outcome of the 2020 presidential election now decided, the fact that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be the next President and Vice President, respectively, of the United States of America brings new hope that we can make progress toward ending our country’s epidemic of gun violence. It’s hard to imagine any president being worse on the gun violence issue [...]

Troubling Trends: Observations Made While Preparing A Presentation for the American Public Health Association Annual Conference A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence October 29, 2020   I had the honor and privilege of being invited to speak on the topic of preventing gun violence at the annual conference of American Public Health Association (APHA) on Monday, October 26, 2020. The APHA, founded in 1872, is the country’s oldest, largest, and most [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence September 19, 2020   On August 14, 2020, in a 2-1 decision, a three judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California’s ban on civilian ownership of large capacity magazines (defined as magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and abbreviated as “LCM’s”) violates the Second Amendment. The ban had been approved by almost a two to one margin by California [...]

Important Messages in Troubled Times from Our 2020 High School Essay Contest Winners A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence June 7, 2020   Last December, when we announced the opening of our 2020 Americans Against Gun Violence National High School Essay Contest, we couldn’t have imagined that by the deadline for students to enter the contest in mid-April, high school campuses across our country would be closed and much of the [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence February 28, 2020 What would we do as a country if the coronavirus killed almost 40,000 Americans every year? If there were regular deadly outbreaks of coronavirus in schools, at workplaces, at places of worship, at nightclubs, at outdoor recreational events, at shopping malls, and at virtually every other kind of venue where people frequently congregate? If since 1968, more American civilians had died of [...]

A Letter to Americans Against Gun Violence from a Dunblane, Scotland Parent With an introduction by the President of Americans Against Gun Violence As we reflect on 2019 and begin the New Year, Americans Against Gun Violence remains the only national gun violence prevention organization in the entire United States that openly advocates overturning the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Second Amendment in the rogue 2008 Heller decision and adopting stringent gun control laws in [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence   During an interview on the PBS News Hour in 1991, the late Supreme Court Chief Justice called the gun lobby’s claim that the Second Amendment was intended to confer an individual right to own guns “one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word, ‘fraud’ – on the American people by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my [...]

Who's To Blame when a 14 Year-old Boy Shoots and Kills His Entire Family? A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence September 12, 2019   Late on the night of Monday, September 2, a 14 year old boy in the small town of Elkmont, Alabama, called 911 to report that he heard gunshots in his home. When police arrived, they found one adult and two children dead in the home, apparently as [...]