Dear Member of Congress,
Over the Lunar New Year holidays, celebrated by millions of Asian Americans across the country, a man opened fire at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California (a majority Asian American community), killing 11 and injuring nine more. Barely two days later, a second mass shooting involving Asians, in Half Moon Bay, took another seven lives. While details are still emerging from both shooting tragedies, we know that the Monterey Park shooter used an assault pistol and high-capacity magazines.
The number of mass shootings terrorizing communities every year is rising rapidly, from 273 in 2014 to 647 in 2020, more than doubling in less than a decade. Further, assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are designed for war, and are the weapons of choice for mass shooters, used in the heartbreaking mass shooting tragedies in Highland Park, Uvalde, Tulsa, Buffalo, and now Monterey Park.
In the face of such horrific gun violence that devastates families and communities for generations, our elected leaders should not be glorifying guns, and there is no more obvious example of that glorification than the fact that assault weapons and high capacity magazines designed for war remain in wide circulation among civilians.
America’s moms do not want to raise our kids in a society where schools, grocery stores, spas, clubs, churches, synagogues, mosques, movie theaters, and other venues – and even our holidays – are not safe. We call on you to ban military-style assault weapons and high capacity magazines NOW!
Sincerely,