Gun control group sends lawmakers fliers with images from Vegas shooting
A gun control group sent fliers to the White House and members of Congress with graphic images from the mass shooting earlier this year in Las Vegas.
The fliers — sent by the Massachusetts-based gun control group Stop Handgun Violence — invite recipients to “wipe the blood off your hands and end mass shootings.”
You are invited to save American lives. https://t.co/RvuQB4xheJ #BloodMoney pic.twitter.com/MQrTWnty6f
— StopHandgunViolence (@stophandguns) December 4, 2017
The fliers include two graphic images from the shooting earlier this year at a country music festival in Las Vegas that killed more than 50 people and injured hundreds. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history and prompted multiple lawmakers to call for gun control.
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The invitations were sent to nearly 300 members of Congress who “vote with the NRA every time,” John Rosenthal, the organization’s co-founder, told The Boston Globe.
An invitation below one of the images reads “RSVP before another mass shooting.”
The recipients then have two options:
The first option reads: “I will vote in favor of background checks for all gun sales and renew the federal ban on military style assault weapons.”
The second reads: “I will continue to put gun lobby blood money above American lives.”
“When you RSVP, imagine these are your kids,” the bottom of the invitation says, above a graphic photo of the Las Vegas shooting.
Stop Handgun Violence says on its website its mission is to “prevent firearm violence through public awareness, education, policy advocacy and law enforcement strategies — without banning guns.”
Rosenthal said the photos on the fliers are “certainly shocking,” but he noted they are “nothing close to the reality of the death and mayhem and pain caused by the real events.”
In the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, multiple lawmakers called for a ban on “bump stocks,” the device used by the suspected shooter that makes semi-automatic weapons fire shots more rapidly.
After the church shooting last month in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Democrats again renewed their calls for gun reform.
Last month, about two dozen Democrats introduced legislation that would ban assault weapons, high capacity ammunition magazines and bump stocks.
Rosenthal said it’s “shocking” that people in positions of power don’t do something to prevent these mass shootings.
“I think they need to be reminded of the reality, and if I could, I would have included the photographs of the 20 first-graders massacred at Sandy Hook [Elementary School] whose parents tell me they had to be identified by their clothing,” he told The Boston Globe.
“We are hoping to shock members of Congress and President Trump to their senses and mobilize the majority of Americans who support common-sense gun policies, to hold them accountable before another large and inevitable mass shooting occurs.”
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