The authors and contributors to the Denver Accord began by drafting principles to which all signatories agree:
- Guns do not make us safer.
- Gun violence in America is a pervasive public health crisis that demands substantial policy solutions and well-funded programs that effectively reduce gun violence.
- Equitable and just enforcement of gun laws is paramount.
- Everyone has the right to live free from violence.
Guns do not make us safer. Perhaps the most urgent change we must make is to dispel the myth that guns make us safer. A gun in the home TRIPLES the risk of gun suicide and DOUBLES the risk gun homicide. The United States has 393 million firearms in civilian hands and we have the highest rate of assault deaths and mass shootings than any other OECD country.
Gun violence in America is a pervasive public health crisis that demands substantial policy solutions and well-funded programs that effectively reduce gun violence. More than 100 people are shot in American every day. About two-thirds of those deaths are suicide–almost all are preventable. We cannot afford to continue to ignore gun violence and the toll it has taken on our country.
Equitable and just enforcement of gun laws is paramount. Some communities suffer the ill effects of the gun lobby’s dangerous “guns everywhere” agenda more than others. Black and Brown communities that also suffer from increased causal factors, like poverty, experience violence at rates that would be unthinkable in other places. In recent years, however, the emergence of impacted community-led non legislative approaches have flourished and preliminary data is encouraging.
Everyone has the right to live free from violence.