Center for American Progress

Tell the Senate: Strengthen Our Nation's Gun Laws

In a grim coincidence, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on gun violence the very morning after the devastating shooting in Boulder, Colorado, killed 10 people.

We know that this violence could have been prevented, along with the horrific shootings in the Atlanta area and the deaths of the estimated 43,000 people killed by gunfire in 2020.

After years of ignoring this issue and governing based on gun lobby tropes, the Senate has the power to significantly lower rates of gun violence by:

Enacting universal background checks and closing the Charleston loophole
Increasing funding for community-based violence intervention programs
Enacting an extreme risk law
Ensuring that all domestic abusers and people who commit hate crimes are prohibited from gun possession
Banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines
Increasing oversight of the gun industry

Tell your senators that they must immediately strengthen our nation's gun laws to better protect our communities.

Dear Senator,

I am writing today as your constituent to urge you to protect our community by strengthening our nation's gun laws.

Gun violence in the United States is a public health crisis. An average of 106 people are killed with guns in this country every day as a result of homicides, suicides, unintentional shootings, and interpersonal conflicts that become fatal due to easy access to guns. This is a uniquely American problem: The gun murder rate in the United States is 25 times higher than that in other high-income nations. But this violence is not inevitable. Congress must take action to address these preventable deaths.

Current federal legislation leaves dangerous gaps that allow individuals who should never have access to a gun to obtain a deadly weapon far too easily. While some states have done their part to close these gaps, the public health crisis warrants a comprehensive national response.

I urge you to take the following actions to keep our communities safe and free from gun violence:

- Require universal background checks. Under current law, individuals who are not licensed gun dealers are free to sell guns without running background checks.
- Close the Charleston loophole. Under current law, gun dealers can sell a gun to an individual without an explicit "green light" from the background check system.
- Disarm domestic abusers. Individuals convicted of a domestic violence crime against a dating partner or of a misdemeanor stalking offense are not prohibited from possessing guns under current federal law.
- Increase support for violence intervention programs. Funding for evidence-based, community anti-violence programs will address root causes of gun violence and save lives.
- Implement extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs). ERPOs can save lives by allowing family members or law enforcement to petition the courts to temporarily take guns out of the hands of people who pose an imminent risk of harm to themselves or others.
- Ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Instruments of war have no place in our communities.
- Increase oversight of the gun industry. A combination of weak laws and insufficient funding has left the industry responsible for flooding our communities with deadly weapons essentially unregulated.

Your action in the Senate can save lives. I urge you to move swiftly to take meaningful action to make all of our communities safe from gun violence.

Sincerely,

{user_data~First name}

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