THE BLAST EFFECT By N. Kirkpatrick, Atthar Mirza and Manuel Canales, Washington Post, Mar 29, 2023
What damage can an AR-15 do to a human body? A rare look.  The Washington Post examined autopsy and postmortem reports from nearly a hundred victims of previous mass shootings that involved AR-15-style rifles.

Every week at All Saints Church we put our faith into action. The action this week is an appeal to Congress to ban assault weapons.

Six victims, slain in a school in Nashville, three of them just 9 years old. They are the latest victims in a gory, unacceptable epidemic of gun violence—and the latest souls whose brutal murders demand we take action to put our children and our communities ahead of loyalty to gun manufacturers and lobbyists.

Once again, the culprit used assault weapons—weapons of violence and mass destruction that have no place in civil society and were never dreamed of, much less protected, by the framers of the Constitution.

Congress must reinstate the assault weapons ban immediately. It worked in the past and can work again. We need commonsense, impactful action to tackle gun violence. Most Americans agree: Civilians do not need military-grade weaponry.

A dance hall in Monterey Park. A Buffalo supermarket. A school in Uvalde. A Fourth of July Parade outside Chicago. A nightclub that was an oasis for the LGBTQ+ community in Colorado Springs. And these are just a few of the massacres over the past year. 130 mass shootings and 56 dead children under the age of 12 since the beginning of this year. Add Nashville’s Covenant School to this list of places that will never be the same, that will be haunted by our society’s inability to act due to obstruction by those loyal to the gun lobby.

Across party lines, voters agree with commonsense measures, but too many elected officials, who are in a ghoulish embrace with the NRA and others in the gun lobby, want to talk about anything other than guns when it comes to gun violence.

Banning assault weapons will have immediate impact. It’s supported by a wide number of Americans of all walks of life.¹ When there was a federal assault weapons ban, the number of gun-related deaths plummeted—and rose again when Congress and President George W. Bush refused to renew it.²

The gun industry is opposed to bans—and opposed to any meaningful efforts to address gun violence in a real way. They would rather stoke fear and reap profits than address an epidemic that just doesn’t exist in many other countries. Massacre after massacre occurs because of military-grade assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and the fast and deadly impact of these weapons. Without AR-15s and other assault weapons, the level of mass gun violence would drop immediately.³

There are so many steps we can take to address gun violence in a serious way—and while banning assault weapons wouldn’t end all gun deaths, it would greatly reduce heinous episodes like the one in Nashville.

Options to Take Action:

1. Sign a letter at the Action Table on Sunday.
2. Download, sign and mail an action letter to your members of Congress.
   Letter for California Residents        Letter for Residents of Other States
   
3. Go to the MoveOn website and participate in the action there.

Sources:

1. “Polling is clear: Americans want gun control,” Vox, June 1, 2022, https://act.moveon.org/go/163314?t=19&akid=348399%2E15252948%2ENsEFDe
2. “How Congress Passed an Assault Weapons Ban in 1994,” The New York Times, June 22, 2021, https://act.moveon.org/go/163315?t=21&akid=348399%2E15252948%2ENsEFDe
3. “Assault weapon ban significantly reduces mass shooting,” Northwestern Now, March 25, 2021, https://act.moveon.org/go/163316?t=23&akid=348399%2E15252948%2ENsEFDe

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If you ever need to look up your member of the U.S. House of Representatives or your U.S. Senators check here: www.house.gov and www.senate.gov.

To find contact information for your California State Senator or California State Assemblymember check here: www.senate.ca.gov and www.assembly.ca.gov.