By now you’ve heard of the heartbreaking mass shooting that occurred at a nightclub on Saturday night and left 50 people dead, many of whom were LGBTQ and Latino immigrants of color.
The shooter used the same kind of gun used to murder children at Sandy Hook Elementary School just a few years ago. And you can buy parts for it on Amazon.
Let’s repeat that - this is a weapon of mass murder, and you can get pieces of it from Amazon.
We’ve had enough! It’s time to act before yet another tragedy. Amazon and our biggest retailers have no business selling parts of military-grade weapons, and they need to stop now.
Tell Amazon and other large retailers to stop selling military-grade assault rifles, their accessories, and the types of high-capacity magazines used in the Orlando and Sandy Hook shootings.
The AR-15 is an assault weapon, designed to kill as many human beings as possible. With this rifle, one man was able to enter an LGBTQ Orlando nightclub, on a Latino-themed night,, and gun down hundreds. He killed 50 and injured dozens of others, while victims hid in the washrooms and fled desperately from the scene. It’s the worst mass shooting in modern history.
And these weapons are in easy reach. Bass Pro Shops and Dick’s Sporting Goods, among many others, sell the military-grade rifle directly to the public.
We need to take a hard look at the climate where these companies are doing their business. Florida does not require background checks for gun sales and transfers between private citizens, gun registration, gun-owner licensing, any special regulation on assault weapons , or limits on the number of firearms that can be bought at one time. It is unconscionable to sell firearms with so little oversight and it’s our most vulnerable communities that are put most at risk.
It’s time that retailers took a stand, and refuse to be complicit in the mass murder of innocent people.
We now know this shooter purchased his gun legally. As Congress continues to be incapable of passing gun control, each retailer that stops selling these sorts of guns will make these dangerous weapons harder to reach for those who would commit future atrocities.
After the Sandy Hook shootings, we came together in grief and outrage - hundreds of thousands of us demanded Walmart stop selling the dangerous weapons. And we won, Walmart quit selling high-powered rifles in its stores in the United States. Now, we need to make sure other major retailers follow suit.
It’s a matter of life or death. We need to get them off our shelves now.
Tell Amazon and other major retailers to pull the AR-15 and other military-grade weapons and accessories.
More information
Quartz. 12 June 2016.
NY Daily News. 13 June 2016.
Remezcla. 12 June 2016.