The gun reform group is asking the transition team to name the first-ever national director of gun violence prevention. Because of its multifaceted nature, gun reform is a policy area that doesn’t currently have a specific federal agency focused on it. The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), which tracks illegal guns and issues licenses, sits within the Department of Justice. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), which traditionally researches the public health effects of gun violence, sits within the Department of Health and Human Services. And research on school safety amid rampant mass shootings is the responsibility of the Department of Education. Read Full Story

Posted by SarahBird We condemn the horrific acts of hate and violence targeting the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, which culminated in the tragic mass shooting in Georgia on March 17th. We mourn the loss of life and grieve with the families that have been broken by this latest racist, misogynistic hate crime. This is not an isolated incident. We must acknowledge the widespread examples of violence and prejudice, bigotry, and intolerance that have been building for some time. We've seen attacks on elders in the Asian community. Children face bullying from peers. There has been workplace discrimination, street harassment, violence, and vandalism . Since the beginning of the pandemic, hate crimes against Asians have increased tremendously . Anti-Asian racism is not new, but it's been fueled by dangerous false rhetoric surrounding COVID-19. I challenge myself and my community to recognize the painful history of anti-Asian racism, to …

President Biden today unveiled an aggressive plan to curb gun violence. Here’s what to know. President Joe Biden today unveiled an aggressive plan to curb gun violence in the United States, addressing several loopholes and other work-arounds that allow perpetrators to gain access to guns and use them to commit mass violence. Read Full Story

While 2020 was a deadly year for gun violence, the U.S. avoided the kind of mass shootings that have plagued the country in recent years. Do the tragedies in Atlanta and Boulder indicate they’re coming back? On March 11, President Joe Biden announced on live TV the purchase of 100 million more one-shot vaccines, and that every adult in the U.S. would be eligible to receive a vaccination by May 1—this, as shots in arms were already increasing, and COVID-19 rates steadily declining. Coupled with the emerging springtime around the nation, it felt like a turning point in our dark age: that the unremitting blues of quarantine might soon be replaced by reunions with loved ones, recreational travel, and the familiar summer joys of baseball games and backyard barbecues. Read Full Story

Gun violence hasn’t stopped during the pandemic—it’s gotten worse. And gun safety organization Giffords wants the business community to commit to fighting the problem. In the face of the Trump administration’s failure to battle COVID-19 or take meaningful action in response to this summer’s national reckoning on systemic racism, an overwhelming majority of Americans are now looking to the corporate world for much-needed leadership on critical issues facing our country. Those issues increasingly include not only COVID-19 and racial justice, but another crisis that is raging in our communities as the federal government fails to act: gun violence. According to a new nationwide poll by my organization, gun safety organization Giffords , Americans expect companies to speak out and take a stand on gun safety. Read Full Story

Parents of Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver created the art projects as a call to action for gun reform. When you think of Orlando, Florida, you may think of sun, lakes, orange trees, and Mickey Mouse. You may associate Charleston, South Carolina, with a pretty port, palmettos, cobblestone streets, and white-sand beaches. Read Full Story

Facial detection has all sorts of technological and ethical problems. What if we tried to prevent crime by using software to spot weapons? A new round of debate over surveillance technology broke out after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. As some oberservers wisely pointed out , such events make it tempting to loosen restrictions on surveillance technologies such as facial recognition in the name of safety, but yielding to those temptations could lead to a rapid erosion of privacy and civil liberties. The Patriot Act Congress adopted after 9/11 (and the mass surveillance programs that followed) is a notable example. Read Full Story

“Celebrity” guests on Zoom, artistic expression, and phone recruitment have all become parts of the new landscape of online activism for curbing gun violence. The original March For Our Lives event in 2018 formed the largest youth-led protests in American history, with turnout estimated at more than 2 million in 387 districts across the nation, protesting the lack of gun control legislation. Since then, the group that started locally in Parkland, Florida, has expanded, organizing more marches, sit-ins, and bus tours. They’ve become as a disrupting force in the fight against gun violence. “That’s how we took a hold of this conversation,” says Trevor Wild, March’s regional organizing director for the southeast. Read Full Story

McConnell's statement came as all sides called for bipartisanship - and many rallied round a more substantial deal, backed by top Democratic leaders and a bipartisan group of Senators.

Can we change policing if we don’t change the country’s lax gun laws? More than three months after Louisville police forcefully entered the home of Breonna Taylor and fired multiple shots, striking her at least eight times, the officers involved still have not faced charges. Without video evidence, like there was for the deaths of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, there’s no “indisputable proof of wrongdoing,” the city’s deputy general counsel said (though one officer is being fired, Louisville Mayor Greg Fisher recently announced .) The police have continued to defend their use of force in the case, asserting that they only fired their guns after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, initially shot at them. Read Full Story