Get involved!
Support the March 14 action of the Women’s March, which calls for a 17-minute walkout at 10 am..
Support the March 24 “March for Our Lives,” organized by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, which will occur in DC and across the nation.
Support the Day of Action on April 20 in every school and school district sponsored by the Network for Public Education, the NEA, the AFT, the BATS, the AASA, LULAC, the National Superintendents Roundtable, the Center for American Progress, and Gabby Giffords, with many more sponsors. Every school and district is encouraged to choose its own way to speak out against gun violence in schools. Activities include wearing orange armbands, assemblies to discuss the issues, sit-ins, teach-ins, before school, after school, or during school, a March on your legislators’ offices, candlelight vigil, linking arms around the school. Use your creativity. Collaborate.
Support the National Student Walkout on April 20, which calls on high school students to walk out at 10 am and not return.
April 20 was chosen for the last two protests because it is the anniversary of the Columbine massacre.
Anti-gun violence actions should continue until state legislatures and Congress act, or until NRA puppets are thrown out of office by irate voters.
Congress should ban the sale of assault weapons to civilians, as it was did from 1994-2004. Presidents Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter endorsed the ban. These weapons, meant for military use, are the guns of choice for mass murderers.
Enough is enough!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Gun Lobby, like the War Profiteers Lobby, is responsible for huge numbers of avoidable deaths and injuries. The Gun Lobby (the NRA, gun makers, gun shows) uses people’s ignorance of the true meaning of the Second Amendment (“A well-regulated MILITIA …”) and distrust and hatred of government to keep the $$$ flowing in, and then uses its gullible, paranoid, misinformed members as well as much of that $$$ to pressure spineless politicians to oppose realistic and effective gun controls, such as what Australia did after the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, outlawing all assault weapons and buying back those already owned.
The War Profiteers Lobby, especially Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrup-Grumman, have so many members of Congress, as well as state and local politicians, in their pocket$ that the many endless, illegal wars the U.S. is now waging (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen); as well as the illegal drone assassinations started by Bush II and escalated by Obama and Trump; the U.S. Special Operations being waged clandestinely in more than 145 nations; and the more than 800 U.S. military bases in more than 80 nations; all of which waste hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, will never be ended as long as these atrocities and war crimes are so lucrative.
As one important step away from the current U.S. imperialist oligarchy, and toward REAL democracy, ALL lobbies should be prohibited.
But greed, no matter how blood-stained, triumphs over all, so that will never happen.
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You might like this:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/study-shows-nra-is-wrong-about-aussie-gun-laws-20180312-p4z41i.html
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I attended a public forum Sunday with my member of congress in the Hudson Valley of New York State. The topic was guns and schools. As you can imagine, there were many passionate voices at the meeting. (There were many teachers in attendance too.)
For those opposed to arming teachers but wondering what they can do to influence the conversation, a constituent suggested looking into what companies your pensions and 401Ks are invested in and then considering putting pressure on the pension investors to divest in gun manufacturers (or at least ones that make the assault rifles.)
I emailed NYSTRS, our teacher’s pension company in NYS, asking about investments in gun manufacturers. Here’s their response:
From NYSTRS on 3/12/2018, 10:56 AM
Thank you for your inquiry.
NYSTRS does hold shares of gun manufacturers in its passive portfolios. These passive portfolios track a broad market index. No decision has been made on divestment of gun stocks from our portfolios. Please be assured your concerns will be shared with our Executive Director.
If you have any additional questions, please write back or call us at (800) 348-7298. Thank you.
Information and Communication Center/dp
Anyone else a little surprised? Anyone else think it might be worthwhile to use a unified voice to force our pension systems to divest at least until sane gun laws are enacted?
(My son wondered aloud to me if NYSTRS might also be invested in for-profit charter schools, as well.)
All food for thought…
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“A California teacher who was a reserve officer for the local police department and trained in firearms accidentally fired a loaded gun in his classroom Tuesday.
The teacher, who worked as a math teacher at Seaside High School in Monterey County, appeared to have been “providing instruction related to public safety” for another class he taught called administration of justice, according to a police statement.
Instead, the teacher fired the gun into the ceiling, and some kind of “debris or fragmentation” struck a 17-year-old student in the neck, police told the Monterey County Weekly. The student’s father told KSBW 8 that the student returned home from school with bullet fragments in his neck.
The Sand City police chief said the teacher had been a reserve officer for 11 years and that he was “positive and professional.” The officer told the Monterey County Weekly that the teacher had his last gun safety training less than a year ago.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/monterey-county-california-teacher-fires-loaded-gun-in-classroom-the-day-before-mass-student-protests.html
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