A highlight at the end of every school year is the moment when students have classmates sign their yearbooks with an autograph of memories. Thousands of children never make it to their yearbook day or graduation all because of their premature death on the other end of a gun.
Parents of children killed by gun violence have teamed up with a gun control advocacy group to publish a yearbook honoring their lives.
New Yorkers Against Gun Violence is raising awareness about the devastating number of young people robbed of their futures in a shooting. Students, all under the age of 17, are remembered with a photo, birth date, date of death, school name and a blurb about their life. The yearbook features just a handful of the thousands killed annually.
“Naiesha was enjoying a family barbecue at the Saw Mill Playground in the Mott Haven neighborhood of The Bronx, when she was struck by a stray bullet and died,” read from an entry about 10-year-old Naiesha Pearson’s death in 2005.
Because these students didn’t make it, you have an opportunity to sign their yearbook in a more meaningful way. The site, signtheiryearbook.com has an official petition in conjunction with Change.org calling for tighter gun laws and universal background checks in the U.S.
The petition says:
In 38 states it is legal to buy a gun without undergoing a criminal background check. The vast majority of gun offenders obtain their guns from private sellers where background checks are not required.
States with universal background check laws have 48% less gun trafficking, 38% fewer deaths of women shot by intimate partners, and a 53% lower gun suicide rate than states without these laws. Furthermore, polls consistently show that over 90% of Americans support background checks.
It’s simple – universal background checks save lives.
Please support universal background checks so that more American children can graduate high school.
Sign their yearbook.
“This Yearbook is dedicated to all the young Americans who never had a chance to live out their natural life spans – to graduate high school and college, have a career, find a partner, and experience the joy of children and grandchildren,“ said Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of NYAGV.
According to a Washington Post report in 2014, young blacks are more likely to die from gun violence than whites.
Learn more about #SignTheirYearbook. The petition closes July 1st.
Following last week’s deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, the Senate will take a vote Monday night on four more proposals aimed at curbing gun violence.
