March, 23 2021, 12:00am EDT
Violence Policy Center Statement on Boulder, Colorado Mass Shooting
Following the mass shooting yesterday at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado that reportedly involved an AR-15 assault rifle and left 10 dead, including a Boulder police officer, Violence Policy Center (VPC) Executive Director Josh Sugarmann issued the following statement:
WASHINGTON
Following the mass shooting yesterday at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado that reportedly involved an AR-15 assault rifle and left 10 dead, including a Boulder police officer, Violence Policy Center (VPC) Executive Director Josh Sugarmann issued the following statement:
"Once again, a military-bred assault rifle was used for the exact purpose for which it was designed: to kill and injure as many people as quickly and efficiently as possible. This latest mass shooting in a public space is the direct result of the gun industry's embrace of militarization and heightened lethality in its products. As a result of the gun industry's hyper-marketing of these military-bred weapons, they are consistently used by civilians to carry out unspeakable atrocities. Our nation is being held hostage by the gun industry, and until the industry is held fully accountable for the direct role it plays in these massacres, communities across the nation will continue to live in fear of the next horrendous attack."
According to a VPC analysis released earlier this year, one in five law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty from 2016 to 2018 were killed with assault weapons. For additional information on assault weapons and the threat they pose to public safety and law enforcement, please see https://vpc.org/regulating-the-gun-industry/assault-weapons/. For a listing of examples of mass shootings in the United States since 1980 involving large-capacity ammunition magazines, please see https://vpc.org/fact_sht/VPCshootinglist.pdf.
The Violence Policy Center (VPC) works to stop gun death and injury through research, education, advocacy, and collaboration. Founded in 1988 by Executive Director Josh Sugarmann, a native of Newtown, Connecticut, the VPC informs the public about the impact of gun violence on their daily lives, exposes the profit-driven marketing and lobbying activities of the firearms industry and gun lobby, offers unique technical expertise to policymakers, organizations, and advocates on the federal, state, and local levels, and works for policy changes that save lives. The VPC has a long and proven record of policy successes on the federal, state, and local levels, leading the National Rifle Association to acknowledge us as "the most effective ... anti-gun rabble-rouser in Washington."
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[image or embed]
— Erin Reed (@erininthemorning.com) December 10, 2024 at 8:14 AM
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