Students are no doubt leading the fight for gun control, but a Boston-based nonprofit is still here to lend a helping hand.
Stop Handgun Violence, a nonprofit that aims to reduce injuries and deaths from firearms through public awareness, education and policy advocacy, has put together a tool kit to help the student activists behind school walkouts across the country and this weekend’s March For Our Lives.
“This tool kit is intended to be a roadmap for students and anyone interested in getting actively involved in helping reduce firearm injuries and deaths in your home state,” the organization wrote on its website. “We hope that our step-by-step guide helps you educate yourself and others in order to save lives and make your community safer, just as we have successfully done in our home state of Massachusetts which has effective gun laws and the lowest rate of gun deaths in the nation.”
Stop Handgun Violence was founded in 1994 and was the leading supporter of the Massachusetts Gun Control Act of 1998.
The tool kit lays out a digital library of resources on topics like how a bill becomes a law, how to contact elected officials, how to pass ballot measures and how to organize school assemblies and community events.
The nonprofit put in a heavy emphasis on education to help activists learn more about gun violence, gun laws and the second amendment themselves, how they can educate their community and how they can counter arguments made by gun lobbies.
The tool kit features documents from Supreme Court legislations on the second amendment, links to polls and studies on gun support and statistics and templates for writing proclamations and resolutions.
John Rosenthal, co-founder of Stop Handgun Violence, said in a statement that this will be a resource for these students to create real change.
“Students helped stop the war in Vietnam; they can certainly help enact common sense gun laws in America,” he said. “Student activists are uniquely positioned to expose the immoral state of national elected officials and their willingness to trade kids’ lives and the public’s safety in exchange for gun industry campaign contributions and unrestricted access to military-style assault weapons and easily concealed handguns.”
See more at stophandgunviolence.org/toolkit.
