The Tennessee legislature has decided that local control of local parks should be overturned. This legislative overreach will prevent localities from setting reasonable rules for using our parks. There is clear evidence that carrying guns endangers the public. Many innocent persons have been injured in Tennessee communities by guns, to the point where we are faced with a health epidemic due to gun injuries. Yet, the Tennessee legislature has passed legislation to prevent localities from establishing reasonable restrictions on gun carry on their local park property. Please stop this legislation from becoming law.

I hope for my son to attend the University of Texas someday unless this bill passes and any wacko can legally carry concealed handguns onto campus. Common sense has been lost in this legislation. Please keep our Texas campuses safe!

I teach at the University of Texas and would much prefer not to be shot!

I am very concerned about the potential for serious harm to innocent students, professors, or other staff if young immature students are allowed to bring guns onto campuses.

Allowing people whose brains are yet to mature and so have poorer impulse control than they will later in life to carry concealed weapons in the emotionally charged atmosphere of a college campus is in really poor judgement. People could be harmed and die needlessly if this passes.

We don't want to be bullied by the NRA any longer. This week, Stop Handgun Violence released a billboard campaign that said "We're Not Anti-Gun, We're Pro-Life: Massachusetts Gun Laws Save Lives." The hope was that people who read the message would understand that we're not trying to ban guns, instead we're trying to enact responsible gun laws that help save lives. However, this message is the NRA's worst nightmare: responsible gun laws work. They immediately called upon their members to harass billboard companies until they removed the billboards. These same intimidation and scare tactics are used against Congress and the result is 83 gun deaths a day. Our message must be heard. The Constitution is much more than the Second Amendment, in fact we could start with the First. Please tell Congress to join me. We won't be silenced and the NRA will not bully us any longer.

The Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence wants to send a message that people in Rhode Island CARE about gun safety and want to keep guns out of our schools, away from domestic violence offenders and to reduce the magazine capacities of assault wepsons.

The NRA lobby has gone far enough in our state and in our nation. The idea that people can carry a concealed weapon without a permit to do so is horrifying on many levels.

Gun rights groups are intent on everyone in the United States having the right to own and carry guns. In the past, gun safety was emphasized even here in Montana. Now it appears that guns have become idolized as part of Montana's values. Montana is so much more and better than that. Gun safety should be a major component of Montana's hunting culture as well as help prevent the state's very high suicide rate from escalating even higher.

Too many people are killed each year already.

This petition is meant to bring awareness to the current issue of gun control. We need to defend the mandatory background check when individuals purchase any lethal firearm. Thank you for your consideration and the time you took to read and sign this petition. Reference: HF-527 and SF-425

The pro-gun lobby is working hard to advance national legislation that would force states to recognize concealed-carry permits from all over the country, regardless of how lax the permitting standards in other states. And some states have lax standards indeed: A Sun-Sentinel investigation found that Florida had issued concealed-carry licenses to 1,400 people convicted of crimes, as well as to hundreds more applicants with warrants, domestic abuse injunctions, or gun violations.[1] And North Carolina, from 2007 to 2011, issued 2,400 conceal-carry permits to people convicted of crimes, including some who committed murder or manslaughter.[2] If mandated national concealed-carry legislation becomes law, it would allow dangerous, high-risk gun owners to go wherever they like with their firearms. The legislation would also encourage such gun owners from around the country to converge on states with loose permitting standards in order to easily get concealed-carry licenses that would have to be honored nationally. Furthermore, individual states would no longer be able to control who is authorized to carry a concealed gun within its borders. Police would not even be able to quickly find out if out-of-state permits are valid, putting law enforcement and the public at higher risk of harm. Mandated national conceal-carry would gut commonsense gun safety laws that parents worked hard to pass in states across our nation. Americans are already about 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than someone from another developed country. Now is not the time to weaken commonsense safety standards or states' rights! Tell Congress to oppose federally mandated concealed-carry legislation now! [1] "The Law that Will Make a Million George Zimmermans," The Daily Beast, Jan. 12, 2015. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/12/the-law-that-will-make-a-million-george-zimmermans.html [2] "Guns in Public, and Out of Sight," New York Times, Dec. 26, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/us/more-concealed-guns-and-some-are-in-the-wrong-hands.html?_r=0