Educators, School Clinicians, School Staff and Parents Petition to Federally Ban Assault Weapons
**Please include your title when signing**
This petition is led by March Fourth, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group with one mission: federally ban assault weapons now.
The U.S. has experienced over 2,000 school shootings since 1970, with numbers dramatically rising since the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012. On average there are almost 40 school shooting incidents every year, or three per month. This epidemic of school shootings is uniquely American, and it’s unacceptable.
Every year educators, clinicians and school staff across the country attend trainings to keep them updated on skills they need to run their schools and classrooms. These trainings now include how to operate during a lockdown drill, effectively calling on our teachers and school staff to become bullet shields, crisis responders and medics. However, these trainings are useless if a shooter enters their schools and classrooms with an assault weapon, a weapon that Uvalde’s only pediatrician said his patients were entirely powerless against.
Our schools are meant to be safe havens, second homes for our children. And for so many they are, until they are not. Assault weapons are designed to cause mass destruction. They are unforgiving and instantly deadly. They enter the body to liquefy organs, leaving pure and unrecognizable devastation. There is no training that can prepare teachers, clinicians and staff to face this potential occupational hazard.
We have made it commonplace to call on our teachers to serve as first responders and to live in a world where they question how they would manage if faced with this utterly impossible situation. How will I protect all of my students at once? How will I help students with disabilities move and hide? How will I keep my young students calm and quiet during the chaos? How will I shield them if I get shot? How will any sort of training save lives against a weapon of war? How is any of this freedom?
March Fourth is working tirelessly with one goal in mind–federally ban assault weapons. Ban the weapons that have become a fatal standard in school shootings. Ban the weapons keeping us from ensuring our schools are safe. Ban the weapons that have taken so many students, teachers, clinicians, and school staff.
We are calling on the U.S. Senate to pass S.25 and the House of Representatives to pass H.R. 698, to federally ban assault weapons so we can stop the never ending list of school shootings in America.
If you are an educator, clinician, parent or school staff, please use your voice to keep our schools safe by signing this petition. Students can sign our petition here https://chng.it/rzZWh7FM Join us–the time is now!
To donate directly to March Fourth, visit our site: https://www.wemarchfourth.org/donate
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