The Las Vegas Massacre and the Bump Stock Diversion A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, the gun lobby was able to insidiously and effectively divert attention away from the fact that the United States is the only high income country in the world in which, as a result of our lax gun control laws and the extraordinarily high number of guns in [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence September 2, 2017 I’d like to invite all Americans Against Gun Violence supporters and other gun violence prevention activists to our first annual dinner on the evening of Sunday, October 22, in Sacramento, California. The dinner will mark the milestone of the first year that Americans Against Gun Violence has been in full operation, and it will be an important opportunity for us to get [...]

The Continuum Between Handguns and Nuclear Weapons Most organizations working to prevent gun violence don’t also address the threat of nuclear weapons. On the 72nd anniversary of the US atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945), however, it seems appropriate to point out that there is a continuum between handguns and nuclear weapons. As former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan stated in 2006: The [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence July 3, 2017 "Be Courageous, Be Bold" My wife and I were on short vacation in Monterey, California last week when we learned about the two latest mass shootings in our country. On Friday, June 30, at least 17 people were wounded in a mass shooting in a club in Little Rock, Arkansas. On the same day, a doctor shot and killed a female physician [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence June 24, 2017 The Elephant in the Dugout During the mass shooting on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia on June 14, 2017, about 20 Republican members of Congress and their staffers hid in the first base dugout while their colleague, Representative Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), lay critically wounded on the field near second base. Three members of the Capitol Police assigned to protect Scalise exchanged [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence June 11, 2017 "Pious Condolences Will No Longer Suffice" On the eve of the first anniversary of the horrific Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, the words of a U.S. Senator from Connecticut ring true: "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 [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence June 5, 2017 On Gun Control, Like Climate Change, the United States is a Rogue Nation On June 1, 2017, Donald Trump announced that the United States would no longer abide by the Paris Climate Accord, putting the USA in solidarity with Syria and Nicaragua, the only other two countries in the world that have not signed on to the accord. Many Americans were appalled, [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence May 20, 2017 “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Reading the bumper sticker on the car in front of me, I immediately thought of Donald Trump. It seems that almost daily, either he or one of his appointees does or says something outrageous, on issues ranging from interfering with the investigation of Russian meddling into the US 2016 presidential election to supporting legislation [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence March 22, 2017 What Doesn't Judge Gorsuch Understand About "A well regulated Militia?" The late Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger called the misrepresentation of the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual right to own guns “one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public” that he had seen in his lifetime. In responding to questions from California Senator Dianne Feinstein during his confirmation [...]

A Message from the President of Americans Against Gun Violence February 3, 2017 12 Questions for Judge Gorsuch On January 31, Donald Trump announced his nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. The next day, with NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre sitting at his side smiling like the cat who just swallowed the canary, Trump urged the Senate to rapidly confirm the nomination. There is scant [...]