We can’t achieve racial justice if people aren’t safe in the communities where they live. Email Gov. Lamont and your state legislators asking them to establish a grant-making authority to support community-based violence prevention programs. 

Our proposed CT Initiative to Prevent Community Gun Violence would support community-based prevention programs through dependable funding, coordinate technical assistance and ensure accountability to save lives in the urban centers that account for most of Connecticut’s gun homicides (learn more here). More than 20 cities and states around the U.S. have similar programs, with demonstrated success. It’s time for Connecticut to take action! 

Take action now! Click here to contact your elected officials.

In Connecticut, up to two-thirds of gun deaths are by suicide, averaging more than 100 lives lost each year. We have a means of preventing firearm suicide: Extreme Risk Protection Orders. ERPOs allow firearms to be removed from gun owners deemed by a judge to be at risk of imminent harm to themselves or others. The problem is, not enough people know about them.

The CAGV Education Fund has a brochure explaining how ERPOs work. Although it is posted on the state’s suicide prevention website, we need to do more to get the word out.

Will you help us raise awareness of this life-saving measure by distributing the brochure in your community? Your local police headquarters, town hall, community center and hospital are all locations that might display the brochure, especially if they are already displaying public safety messages.

Please click here to sign up if you’re interested. We’ll supply brochures, plastic stands and a letter explaining why this is important. We’ll also connect you to others in your community who have signed up for this effort so you can work together.

Students can’t learn, and teachers can’t teach, if they aren’t safe in their schools. Two-thirds of school shooters obtain the gun they used from their home or the home of a relative.

School superintendents need to do more than lockdown drills to protect students, teachers and staff from the threat of gun violence. They need to address a root cause of school shootings: the irresponsible behavior of gun owners who don’t securely store their firearms.

Please click here to add your name to the hundreds of students, parents and others who are calling on school district superintendents to communicate to parents about securely storing their guns. #MoreGunsLockedUpFewerLockdowns.

The Town Hall Watch Project is a crowd-sourced effort to maintain a calendar of all 187 state legislators’ town hall meetings. It lets us (and other advocacy organizations) efficiently keep track of town hall sessions so we can send supporters to these public forums to advocate for our legislative priorities.  

Volunteers monitor the constituent communications of the legislators to whom they are assigned. When they see a town hall scheduled, they enter the details in a Google form. It takes no more than 5 or 10 minutes a week to track and enter the information. 

Sign up to volunteer here.

Learn more about the Town Hall Project here. 

Many states have organizations similar to CAGV who rely on grassroots supporters just as we do. Ask your out-of-state friends and family to sign up. It’s especially important in conservative states where lawmakers don’t support common-sense gun laws. 

Direct them to supgv.org.