A CALL TO ACTION

We Must Work Together for Stronger Gun Laws

This website is dedicated to advocating for sensible federal gun laws. The goal is to rally a variety of religious congregations to participate. The hope is that this coming Fall - October at my church home of East Liberty Presbyterian Church - many, many letters and phone calls will inundate congressional representatives and senators.

To join the effort or comment - click here!

Here is a draft of suggested gun law enhancements:

Proposed common advocacy position on gun violence:

The United States is increasingly plagued with deadly shootings - very often of multiple persons - and frequently using military style weapons. In the face of this epidemic of gun related violence, we support the following steps:

A background check must be conducted before the sale of any firearm as part of a national system of enforcement.
The sale of military style weapons to civilians must be banned nationally and their import prohibited.
Red flag laws must be enacted to permit firearms to be taken from a person identified as a danger to him or her self or to others.
Regulations must require the safe storage of firearms and that a lost or stolen firearm be reported.
A permit must be required to carry a firearm in public.

While advocacy at the state level is important, ultimately these regulations should be adopted nationally to prevent their evasion by crossing state lines.

We emphasize that in advocating for these regulations we do not intend to inhibit the safe sale and responsible use of firearms for hunting or target practice.

We also encourage additional funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to conduct firearm dealer inspections and to study how to detect potential perpetrators of gun violence.

Some will want to alter the list above. To facilitate changes, and to encourage promotion of the list, here it is in several formats: Text pdf Word LaTeX html

A letter need not be lengthy, but should certainly be clear in the need for legislative action and include the sender's name and address to establish one's status as a constituent. Here is a sample in text format for my Congressional district. Sadly we have had recent mass shootings in our area to help make the case.

Sample letter

Now, here is some information on the problem including surveys of the view of religious denominations followed by legislative contact information.

To begin, here is a link to establish the magnitude of the problem: Gun Violence Archive

Here are survey results from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding that indicate the high degree of support for improved gun laws across religious denominations:

With this indication of the popularity of strengthened gun laws the message is clear - those favoring the changes must become more vocal! That is the main objective - to be heard!

Not unexpectedly given the above data, here is the reverse view with the outlier clearly evident:

Surely the rest of us can out advocate that one group!

This recent Gallup Poll seems to confirm the results in the surveys above.

To help contact Congressional representatives, try this resource: Directory of Representatives

Here is a searchable list of Senators: US Senate

Writing letters is not the only activity to advocate for enhanced gun laws. A Memorial to the Lost involves the display of t-shirts identifying area gun violence victims by name, date of death, and age at death.
To the right are t-shirts at East Liberty Presbyterian for our Memorial last Fall. There a 19 shirts there in total - one quarter of the total gun violence victims in our county by September 10. The others were at three other churches and we marched among them with a brief service at each.
The hand lettered shirts are hung on tees made from pvc pipe and are held upright by 15 inch long pieces of rebar driven into the ground.
You can learn much more about this type of activity at Memorial to the Lost which is a part of the Heeding God's Call website.
Shirts

Here are other organizations that one might also support or connect with:

Every Town for Gun Safety
Brady United
CeaseFirePA
Heeding God's Call
March For Our Lives