Arfin,
I don't want to be writing you this email. I don't want to write to you about how there's been yet another massive school shooting in the U.S. I don't want to have to fall back on the usual framework I use when writing about this, just updating it with details about "this time."
But because grotesque acts of mass gun-based murder occur so frequently in the U.S., I am writing you this email, following my years of practice writing exactly these kinds of messages.
Congress could easily prevent this series of repeating horrors. All U.S. lawmakers have to do is finally choose to prioritize the safety of the American people over corporate profits, and pass comprehensive gun safety laws.
This time around, a person in their 20s approached a school in Minnesota, the Annunciation Catholic School, which was beginning its first week of the new school year. While children, teachers, and other adults gathered in the school's church pews around 8:30am, the person hauled a collection of various different guns from their car and stood outside the school's church windows.
As they shot through the windows, aiming directly for the children there, the shooter periodically stopped to alternate between using different guns. This person killed 2 children, and injured 17 additional people — some as young as 6 years old. Some are in critical condition. One girl watched gunshots hit her best friends in their stomach and neck, then had to recount it to her friends' parents.
Why is it like this in the U.S.? We all know the answer by now: the corporate gun lobby, the National Rifle Association. Why do we continue to let a lobbying organization hold Congress hostage while each year, children are killed simply going to school?
Sign the petition to demand Congress finally show it cares about the lives of the American people and American schoolchildren by passive comprehensive gun safety laws!
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