Finally, some much needed good news!
California is investing an additional $107 million in community based gun violence prevention through the CalVIP program, sending funding to 42 cities, counties, community organizations, and tribal governments working on the frontlines of violence intervention.
Gun violence costs the United States an estimated $557 billion every year.
That is about 2.6 percent of the entire U.S. economy, or more than $1,600 per person, every year.
This cost is higher than what the federal government spends annually on education.
We are holding the victims, their loved ones, and everyone impacted in our hearts. And we are reminded, again, that this crisis does not pause, does not take weekends off, and does not spare any space meant for joy.
We cannot accept this as normal.
What should have been an ordinary night out became a scene of chaos and trauma. Families are grieving. Survivors are recovering. A community is once again left trying to process the unthinkable.
This morning we woke up to the horrific news of another mass shooting, this time at a beer garden in Austin, Texas. First responders rushed in and stopped the shooter quickly, but an enormous amount of pain remains for loved ones and for the city.
The U.S. has more guns than people.
We will not stop until we have built a country where no one has to fear gun violence.
On this heavy day, we carry our beloved 17 with us as a charge to keep going. The march is not over. It is accelerating. Our movement will outlast thoughts and prayers, and it will outlive those determined to turn back the clock.
Still, much remains undone. While we have fought, thousands of innocent people have been killed by everyday gun violence and mass shootings. And those threatened by our movement are working to dismantle hard-won progress.
Yet over these eight years, we have marched by the millions. We have registered a generation of voters. We have fought in the halls of Congress and in statehouses across the country, securing effective gun safety laws. And we have changed how this country talks about guns and gun violence.
We were told that the systems putting gun profits over the lives of children were too powerful and too entrenched to challenge.
Eight years ago, lives were forever shattered when a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 students and educators, wounding many more. We remember. We were told our pain, grief, and anger would fade with time.
Gun violence is preventable.
It's a place to plug in and actually do something, whether that’s taking a few minutes from your couch, getting involved on your campus, or showing up in your community. It’s where we share clear actions, practical tools, and ways to turn care into momentum.
A lot of people want to help end gun violence, but they just don’t know where to start. That’s what our Action hub is for!
Become a member (for free): marchforourlives.org/actions/memb...
They get richer while more Americans die from the lack of common sense gun control — with
@marchforourlives.bsky.social and
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Ending gun violence means listening to that leadership and committing to the long work of prevention, equity, and public safety for all.
This Black History Month asks us to sit with an uncomfortable reality and a clear lesson. Harm is produced by systems, and it can be reduced when those systems are changed. The path forward has always been led by the people most impacted.
Across the country, Black organizers, survivors, and community leaders are building solutions that reduce violence and save lives through care, accountability, and proven intervention.
Black history is also a history of leadership in the face of crisis. When institutions failed to protect Black lives, communities organized to protect each other. Today, that leadership continues.
In January, we showed our support for the RIFL Act in Illinois, a first-of-its-kind state law that would hold gun manufacturers accountable for the harm caused by their products.
1,001 people were killed by gun violence in the first 31 days of 2026.
But while attention has remained fixed on the NRA, the NSSF has been working quietly in the background. It's less recognizable, less controversial by design, and in many ways more effective.
For years, the NRA has been treated as a stand-in for the entire gun industry, dominating headlines, absorbing public outrage, and coming to symbolize the force standing between communities and meaningful change.
That visibility has made it easy to believe the story ends there.
Violence does not become acceptable because the shooter wears a badge. Alex Pretti was killed in the street. That demands answers and accountability, not excuses and not acceptance.
Young people in this country are exhausted by gun violence being treated as unavoidable, whether it comes from a civilian with a gun or from state-sanctioned agents acting with impunity.
The hypocrisy is grotesque: the same forces that endlessly glorify lawful gun ownership are now racing to smear this man as a danger, rewriting legality as a threat the moment it becomes convenient to justify killing him.
Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse whose life was devoted to keeping other people alive. He was killed by the state, shot by a federal agent. Public reporting and video make clear this was not a split-second mistake. It was state violence carried out by armed agents who treat civilian life as expendable.
Gun violence is often described as inevitable. History suggests something more precise: harm becomes permanent when the systems that sustain it remain unexamined.
Read our latest Substack 👇
The SHOT Show is where the gun industry decides what enters the civilian market. New firearms, ammunition, suppressors, optics, and tactical gear debut here before appearing in gun stores nationwide.
