Something I’m Thinking About
As a father of 3 young kids the most recent school shooting in Uvalde, TX last week has shaken me considerably — shamefully, more so than similar incidents have in the past.
I’ve spend the past few nights and mornings just staring at my kids sleeping, hoping that they’re never subjected to such atrocities.
This newsletter’s intent is to ‘add joy to your day’ so instead of providing my inconsequential opinions or offering equally useless “thoughts and prayers”, I want to share a few resources I’ve uncovered over the past week where I’ve been learning more about the history and politicization of the second amendment and a few organizations where you can donate money and time to help push our leaders into enacting sensible gun control laws.
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Gun Control PACs
OpenSecrets.org has a list of the top Political Action Committees formed to enact sensible gun control laws. In 2019/2020 they donated over $1.4 million to candidates who support background checks and other common sense gun control laws.
Meanwhile, you can check out this NRA’s contributions to political candidates and see that, as well intentioned as these organizations are, they’re massively underfunded compared to the $15.8 million pro-gun groups spent in 2021.
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Guns & Politics
Here’s a great article on the history of the NRA, their rise to power and where the modern gun law debate entered politics. I encourage you to take 10-15 minutes to educate yourself on it’s nuanced past and how we got to where we are today.
Spoiler alert - this wasn’t a political issue until it was strategically made one in the 1970s.
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Taking Action
I learned this week that 90% of our country supports background checks when purchasing firearms and the sheer fact that any of this is still considered “a debate” is just depressing.
While it’s daunting to think about what any of of us can do to effect real change, I think the bare minimum at this moment would be to reach out to our elected officials.
Here is a quick and easy way to go send them a letter, and by all means, if you feel so inclined, donate time or money to these underfunded groups.
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What I’ll Be Doing
This past week I made a donation to Everytown For Gun Safety and I ask you consider doing that same.
As an incentive, I’ll make a follow up one based on the % of donations our collective community makes — just drop me an email with a screenshot or receipt.
Something I’m Proud Of
On a much more positive note, my sister Mandy is a public school teacher in Maple Shade, NJ and was named “Teacher of the Year” for the entire district.
They had an awards ceremony last week but heres a great pic of her with some of her students a few months back when they made the announcement.
Go give her a little comment love!
Something I Photographed
The weather was 10/10 Saturday night so we headed down to the boardwalk in Asbury Park to listen to Modest Mouse’s Stone Pony Summer Stage show.