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 [...]

We're Asking the Supreme Court to Reverse a Death Sentence that was Wrongly Decided A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence   In a study published in 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers from Stanford University estimated that at least 4% of prison inmates convicted of capital offenses were wrongly convicted.[1] In a number of cases, prosecutors knowingly withheld information that that would have proved that an inmate on [...]

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, [...]