Don’t Look Away
After the tragic shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, Everytown supporters—alongside gun violence survivors and Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers—showed up in Washington, D.C. and in their home states to tell elected officials: don’t look away. Our volunteers drove over one million calls and messages to the U.S. Senate, as well as dropped off tens of thousands of petitions at home state offices urging senators to take bold action.
In June 2022, Everytown and Moms Demand Action held more than 350 events across all 50 states for National Gun Violence Awareness Day and Wear Orange Weekend. As senators negotiated the gun safety bill, Everytown, Moms Demand Action, and Students Demand Action held multiple rallies on Capitol Hill. Students Demand Action volunteers across the country also hosted 250+ school walkouts to demand action. Additionally, Everytown launched a $400,000 ad campaign targeting key U.S. senators.
All these actions ultimately helped lead to the passing of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Congress’ first meaningful gun safety law in nearly 26 years.
Voices from the Movement
“Across this country—whether it’s the racist mass murder of Black shoppers in Buffalo by a white supremacist or the gun violence that tears communities in this country apart every single day—this epidemic disproportionately impacts Black people. We experience 10 times the gun homicide, 18 times the gun injuries, and the police shoot and kill us three times as frequently as white people. Senators, isn’t it clear none of the survivors here on your front lawn deserved life-changing trauma and pain from gun violence?”
—Ade Osadolor, Students Demand Action Advisory Board member from Texas
“It is well-known that communities of color already bear the brunt of gun violence in this country. But often we don’t think about the impact on Latinx communities. Latinx people are twice as likely to die by gun homicide and four times as likely to be wounded by an assault with a gun than white people. And devastatingly, Latinx children and teens like myself are three times more likely to be killed by a gun than our white peers.”
—Emmanuel “Manny” Macedo, Students Demand Action volunteer from Los Angeles, CA
“You’ve heard the old adage—a picture’s worth a thousand words. Senators, colleagues, whether you’re Republicans or Democrats, you can’t look away. . . You can’t close your eyes or your ears to what’s happening in America. And you have to listen and see the voices and faces that are here because these students speak for America.”
—Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
“Change happens when we make it happen. Change happens through protests, through activism, through work, through voting, through doing the things that are necessary to make our democracy work. Because it has been too many years that this crisis has not been on the front of the agenda of Washington, too many years where we’ve watched the killings in our country continue, have known too many people that have been died by gun violence—too many young people in my home community of Newark, New Jersey [who’ve had their] lives cut short by murder by guns.”
—Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ)