Two weeks. That's how long it took for our nation to experience yet another school shooting.
Yesterday's shooting at Alpine High School in Texas left one student wounded, and the student shooter dead.
Politicians are sure to offer thoughts and prayers to the victim, students, and Alpine residents, but we have to again wonder: how does this keep happening?
The short answer: in politics, money talks. And the National Rifle Association has lots of it. The NRA takes its members’ money and uses it on lobbying efforts to make sure anyone, including people with a history of domestic violence or mental illness, can walk into a store and buy a gun without a background check. It even got Congress to ban the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from studying this national epidemic.
But enough is enough.
We cannot fight a problem we don't understand. Sign the petition to demand that Congress end the federal ban on gun research.
The NRA has been waging a war on the CDC since 1996 when it accused the agency of "promoting" gun control. It's efforts were successful and Congress passed the Dickey Amendment, which effectively blocks the CDC's from studying this important issue.
But we can change that. We’ve come together before to take back political power from corporate interests and big lobbies, like when we called on the SEC to reconsider the disastrous Citizen’s United. And now, in the wake of another gun tragedy, we’re coming together to get money out of politics so that the CDC can resume studying this national health issue without fear of losing its funding .
Sign the petition to call on Congress to stop blocking gun violence research.
More information
CNN. 26 June 2016.
AP. 8 September 2016.
Huffington Post. 3 December 2015.