To the editor:

An letter in this paper last week focused on assault weapons without referencing the crisis of gun violence in America. The facts that I cite here are from sources including the CDC, Congressional reports, Giffords Law Center and university studies.

Gun violence is uniquely an American public health crisis. The US gun homicide rate is 26 times that of other high-income countries.
Firearms are the leading cause of death for American children and teens. Every day a child gains access to a loaded weapon and unintentionally shoots themselves or others nearby.

Access to a loaded weapon triples the risk of death by suicide. Not only are teens and veterans particularly at risk, but also white middle age men, who make up 70% of firearm suicide victims in America.

Assault weapons are typically a subset of semi-automatic firearms with features designed to enable shooters to repeatedly fire at large numbers of people quickly. Due to declining gun sales in the 1980’s, the gun industry developed and marketed these weapons based on high-powered military designs. An assailant with an assault rifle is able to hurt and kill twice the number of people compared to an assailant with a non-assault rifle or handgun.

Examples of mass shootings in America involving assault weapons and/or large capacity magazines include Uvalde, Texas, Buffalo, N.Y., Boulder, Colo., Dayton, Ohio, El Paso, Texas, Gilroy, Calif., Thousand Oaks, Calif., Pittsburgh, Pa., Parkland, Fla., Sutherland Springs, Texas, Las Vegas, Nev., Orlando, Fla., Newtown, Conn., Lewiston, Maine, and Aurora, Colo.
Nationwide, 67% of registered voters support a ban on assault weapons. And 10 states, plus D.C., have enacted laws that do just that. These laws are all slightly different but all work to prevent these weapons of war from being readily available to the general public.

Our legislators are listening to the majority of Rhode Island voters who want sensible gun laws, including 70% who want an assault weapons ban. Governor McKee included a ban on assault weapons in his 2025 State of the State Address

The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said “You are entitled to your own opinions. You are not entitled to your own facts.”

Susan Morettini
Highland Road