How do we begin to recover?

 While a community and a nation remain numb from grief,  let's turn the horrific tragedy in Newtown into something positive that honors those young, innocent victims.

Please add your name and support an assault weapons ban!

How do we begin to recover?

Words cannot express our heartbreak as we grieve for the children and educators killed in Newtown on Friday. As a father, I cannot even begin to imagine what the victims' families are going through. Connecticut is my home, and this senseless tragedy is unfathomable to our state -- and the nation.

As President Obama stated in last night's press conference, we must take responsibility for each other and we must take responsibility to make sure this does not happen again.

Too many families have faced heartbreak this year.

Join us in a national campaign for an assault weapons ban.

Now is the time for life-saving, common-sense legislation that would again ban semi-automatic weapons along with the high-capacity magazines that feed them.

The tragic tale of these shootings sadly repeats a common theme -- in Tucson, Aurora and Newtown, the killer used semi-automatic guns to unleash hundreds of bullets at his victims.

But gun violence is not new. Since 1982 more than 75% of mass-murders were committed with legally obtained weapons and most were semi-automatic. Of the 12 deadliest shootings in U.S. history, half have happened since 2007 -- the last assault weapons ban bill expired in 2004.

No community should ever again have to feel this level of grief. We must do everything we can to prevent this from happening again. Now is the time -- we've lost too much already.

Together we can put sensible restrictions in place to prevent future tragedy. There's more we can do -- improve background checks, closing the gun-show loophole -- but this is a critical first step to save lives. With Members of Congress set to introduce legislation that would bring back the assault weapons ban, now is the time to stand together and ban these killer weapons.

Wishing you and your family peace.

- Jim

Jim Dean, Chair
Democracy for America


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