Julianne Moore is speaking out against gun violence in a power powerful essay, in which she describes how the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 spurred her into action.
“I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the news away from my daughter forever, but I didn’t want her to hear it accidentally,” Moore wrote for Lena Dunham‘s Lenny Letter. “I figured I would tell her when we came home and her brother and father were there. I wanted to explain it and not scare her. But how was I was going to tell my young daughter that children were massacred in their classrooms? How could I explain that level of atrocity?”
After talking with her then 10-year old daughter about the events of that day, Moore said that she could no longer sit back and do nothing.
“An average of 91 people a day are killed by gun violence,” Moore continued. “That includes children killed by random bullets, mass shootings at workplaces and universities, intimate-partner homicides, and suicides. Women in the United States are 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than women in any other developed nation. More than half are killed by a boyfriend, husband, or someone else in her family. There is a new website, Singled Out, that specifically highlights how America’s lax gun laws put single women at risk.”
Moore then stated that most gun owners support reforms like universal background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.
“A majority of us are on the same side, so why does our country have a gun murder rate 25 times that of other developed countries?” she asked.
Moore then cited more statistics about the level of danger in allowing known abusers access to firearms. “Studies show that when there’s a gun in a home where domestic violence has occurred, the chance that one partner will be killed increases by 20 times,” she said.
She then called on people to work toward closing the background check loophole on a state by state level, given the current deadlock in Congress, stating that 18 states and the District of Columbia have passed such measures.
“In those 18 states, there are half the number of mass shootings, 46 percent fewer intimate-partner gun homicides, 48 percent fewer police gun homicides, and 48 percent fewer firearm suicides,” she said. “That leaves 32 states that have NOT closed the loophole, and the next logical step is to go to work on changing that.”
Moore closed the piece by imploring everyone to visit the website of Everytown for Gun safety, which is an organization that lobbies against gun violence.
“Again, I am talking about solutions that are supported by the vast majority of the American people, including gun owners,” she said. “So please, join me. Join Lena. Join all of us at Everytown. Go to everytown.org and sign up. We will let you know about big events, important elections, and other easy things you can do to help. We will be so happy to have you. We need you to continue to turn the tide on gun violence. And I know that we can do it together. I don’t ever want to have to explain another Newtown to my kids, and neither should you.”