Ceasefire Oregon

The Ceasefire Oregon Education Foundation works to reduce gun violence by educating the public and providing opportunities to dispose of unwanted firearms. Since 1994, we have provided for the safe surrender and disposal of 7,161 guns. Our affiliate, Ceasefire Oregon, works to reduce gun violence by advocating reasonable gun safety legislation and opposing irresponsible bills. Ceasefire Oregon supporters are people throughout Oregon who believe that guns are too easily available to criminals, children and others who should not have them. We believe by offering a way to dispose of unwanted guns and encouraging education and safe storage we can reduce the number of preventable gun deaths in our state.

Working Together to Reduce Gun Deaths and Injuries

States United to Prevent Gun Violence Research and Education Fund is an association of independent state-wide gun violence prevention organizations. The purpose of States United is to allow our members to share best practices, programs and legislative ideas in order to work effectively to prevent gun deaths and injuries. If you want to get involved, check out our list of state members and contact the one in your state. 

Here’s to 2010! We hope that it will bring more peace and less gunfire across the United States. Our children, our families, our communities deserve to have “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Children need to grow up free from the fear of gun shots in their neighborhood or on the way to school. We can be different in this country as many other countries do not have our problem with guns.

The state organizations in our groups are working hard to bring more peace to our communities. Arizonans for Gun Safety worked with the Phoenix police on a essay and poster contest and education about the dangers of celebratory gunfire. They also worked to see Shannon’s law passed that makes it a felony to shoot a gun into the air and is named for Shannon Smith who was killed in her own backyard in 1999 by a gunshot that came out of the sky and was probably shot from half a mile away. According to news reports after New Years the law has been very effective. Calls to the police about celebratory gunfire on New Years Eve have dropped 50% according to a report by News12 of Phoenix.

CeasefirePA is working on local laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. They are working on local ordinances to require the reporting of lost and stolen guns. Such reporting allows law enforcement to go after straw purchasers who buy guns for others and then claim not to know what happened to the gun. 24 PA cities and townships have now passed such laws and the pressure is on the state legislature to pass a state lost and stolen gun law.

The Virginia Center for Public Safety held its lobby day in Richmond, Virginia, on Martin Luther King's day to start a push for the legislature to close the gun show loophole in Virginia.   They had a press conference, a lie-in in remembrance of the Virginia Tech shootings and visited with legislators.

All of our groups have been working hard to get cosponsors on HR2324 to close the gun show loophole.  Every gun sale should involve a thorough background check of the buyer – No background check, no gun. Federal legislation should be passed to make sure that all gun sales at gun shows involve a background check. Here is a moving video on the current gun show loophole developed by the Brady Campaign.

We also know that 1% of gun dealers provide over 50% of the guns that move into the illegal market and crime. We need to make sure that the ATF has the resources and powers to crack down on these bad gun dealers. On November 24th, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Carolyn McCarthy introduced a new gun trafficking bill aimed at those bad gun dealers and the gun traffickers who buy firearms from them and sell them illegally on the streets of our cities. The bill was introduced at a press conference that also included Mayor Bloomberg, NYC Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, parents who lost a daughter to random gun fire last Spring, the President of the Brady Board and the Executive Director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.  The North County Gazette has an excellent article explaining the bill.

Our state organizations have been working hard to educate the public about the terrible toll that gun violence takes in this country.

Washington Ceasefire has been working a project to track guns in the hands of young people and the devastation this can cause. They have a new Website called schoolshooting that tracks shootings at and around schools across the nation.

On August 29th, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence attended the unveiling of a wonderful mural developed by one of their coalition partners working with youth in Brooklyn.

Our California organization, Women Against Gun Violence (WAGV) has an excellent video in which mothers talk of the children they have lost to gun violence and the work they are doing to prevent gun violence - click on Watch the Video on WAGV.  On October 4th, as reported in the Jewish Journal, WAGV organized a run with Brady chapters and survivors of the shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center 10 years ago.  The run and displays beforehand highlighted the problem of gun violence and raised money to reduce the problem.