Shortly after 9:30 am on December 14, 2012 a mentally disturbed gunmen entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT and used a semi-automatic assault rifle and 2 semi-automatic pistols to murder 20 innocent children, mostly kindergarteners, and 6 courageous adults after he had killed his mother in their home. The hearts of Americans and people around the world are breaking as a result of this senseless violence. While broken hearts reflect our deepest values and humanity, they are not enough! It is time for all Americans to compel our government to make reasonable and common sense gun reforms NOW! President Kennedy, who was brought down by an assassin's bullets , said, "If not us, who? If not now, when?" While Americans are ambivalent about "gun control" in general, in repeated polls the MAJORITY of Americans support 5 simple reforms that can make our country safer for all Americans without infringing on our Constitutional rights: 1. Background Checks 2. Registration 3. No guns for felons/mentally ill 4. No semi-automatic weapons 5. No high capacity clips We are not a Republican America or a Democratic America. We are the United States of America and we believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans support reasonable, sensible gun reforms now. We ask ALL Americans - mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, sisters and brothers, loved ones and friends, Republicans and Democrats, gun owners and non-gun owners, people of all faiths and people of no faith - to JOIN us in enacting common sense gun controls that protect all Americans, particularly our children, while affirming our Constitutional rights. We do not believe that these two objectives - affirming the Constitution and enhancing our safety are incompatible. In fact, we believe that strengthening both of these fundamental values affirms the highest principles - rights and freedom, compassion and community - upon which our country was founded. While some on both sides would support the extreme of "all guns" or "no guns," and there are those who will oppose us, we believe that sensible reform must balance respect for our Constitution with the protection of the most vulnerable members of society. We believe that common sense gun reform must be based on the following Four Principles: 1. Affirm and Respect the Second Amendment's "....right to bear arms"; 2. Universal Registration and Background Checks; 3. No Guns for Felons/people with Severe Mental Illness; 4. Ban Semi-Automatic Weapons and High Capacity Clips; If you agree with us, please SIGN our petition and SHARE this with everyone you know. In addition, please CONTACT our leaders and compel them to enact common sense gun reform based on these 4 Principles NOW! Contact the President at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact Contact your Senators here: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm Contact your Representative here: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ If you agree with these simple principles for common sense gun reform, you must make your voice heard in our democracy! As Abraham Lincoln, who was also brought down by an assassin's bullet, said, "With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds." Let us all come together as Americans in honor of the 20 innocent children and 7 courageous adults who were slain in Newtown, CT. and join together to bind up our nation's wounds. Let us not standby and let these 20 innocent children and 7 courageous adults deaths be in vain.

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The Social Security Trust Fund is solvent and only problematic when political leaders see the money and want to use it. This was true of Lyndon B. Johnson, for his war in Southeast Asia, and in 1980 President Reagan and the democratic congress decided to tax the benefits. The COLA, initated in 1975 was used as a means to cope with out of control inflation, but has been kept until it's recent use in the "fiscal cliff" talks.. The SSI program must be taken off the table while the fiscal cliff is under discussion. Any revision of the program needs a concentrated analysis and review that guarantees any contributions to the SSI funds are put in a "locked box" for future generations. To use SSLI as a chip to leverage free income for the top 2% is a further deterioration for the life of older Americans. Remember SSI funds are used to to make Medicare payments and come out of the individuals monthly supplements. Medicare's fee didn't freeze, why keep taking money away from social security recipients. If you freeze the supplement, then make it tax free again.

THERE IS NO REASON WHY WE SHOULD OR EVEN THINK ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFIT CUTS IN "FISCAL CLIFF" NEGOTIATIONS.

I have not currently been affected by the cuts but have paid in for over 38 yrs. I want my benefits available when I reach the time I am able to collect.

All people all over the globe should have a home, food and the type of health care they need. Social Security is now being considered as a cut to help with the deficit. I know many who depend on this to keep a home, food and to stay healthy. These cuts should not happen.

Keep Social security benefits intact and increase the amount of yearly increases to meet actual cost of living!

My husband and I are both 75, we have very small pensions from our previous jobs, but depend on our ss and medicare for living expenses, I would like to see all politians give up part of their income and see how that feels, if you all had to depend on ss, instead of your fat paychecks, and your cushy pensions, maybe, just maybe you can understand those of us who don't get what you do.

The party of greed lost. Act accordingly.

This is something that I have paid into over the years. Money from Social Security should not be put into the Governments General Fund and it would be self sustaining fund.

Tax breaks and other perks should not be given to companies that do not live up to union by laws that guarantee that union labeled items are made in the USA by legal USA residents.

Where we have failed both the children and the adults who need assisted living for mental illness, and have few if any specific hospitals geared to helping these disabled Americans, and as it this mental illness disability has led to horrific actions by certain individuals who need this aid, this petition is for the intervention of our federal government to implement a plan to once again create institutions for these affected Americans. History tells us that it was under Pres. Regean who closed many of these hospitals. Sending into the streets or back to families these institutionalized disabled Americans. Many of these families were unable to cope with the stress of a mentally disabled child or an adults return. Unfortunately these Americans had become victims in those rounds of budget cuts. We can afford and we budget to spend billions on aid for helping women have abortions, killing 1.3 million babies last year, when 20 young innocent children lose their life from the actions of someone who needed to be institutionalized. those anti 2nd amendment advocates cry out for the elimination of the gun. There is no daily prayer for the life loss in abortions not a prayer or a word against abortion killings, accept from pro-Life supporters. The abandonment of federal funded facilities was predicated on the belief that we had discovered drugs capable of making someone disabled - normal or close to it as is our understanding of it. Well we can no longer accept the drug companies position of drugging these disabled people into normality as the answer. Knowing when they commit hideous crimes they had been off of those very prescribed drugs. Americas needs are far greater than to depend on the various institutions that are scattered around the country for aid. Often forcing families to drive hours for help if it is to even become available. We need state run facilities capable of handling these patients in a manner befitting what they would receive at any private institution. When we are faced with the destruction these mentally disabled individuals cause by gun usage, it affects us all. As Americans we jump quickly to one side or the other. A side that benefits our desires and beliefs, as once again we leave behind the real culprit. The need to make help available to those who need it the most, Americas mentally disabled.