Had time to waste during a school break.

As Connecticut residents, we have seen the aftermath of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where 20 children and 6 educators were killed in 2012. Families and communities can no longer be torn apart due to careless acts of violence carried out with weapons that are not regulated properly. We demand legislation be passed that the vast majority of Americans want, not just legislation that aligns with special interest groups. Currently, it is perfectly legal to go online and buy most of an unassembled gun, without a serial number and without any registration requirements. Only a modicum of skill is needed to put it all together. Firearms made from these DIY kits are known as ghost guns because they contain no serial numbers, are untraceable and require no background check to purchase. But these firearms are no playthings. Homemade assault weapons have been used in mass shootings and attacks on law enforcement around the country. Even in Connecticut, which passed some of the nation’s toughest gun laws in the wake of Sandy Hook, anyone could get a ready-to-assemble gun by mail within a matter of days. The passage of House Bill No. 5540 would regulate these guns and help reduce that number of unregistered, untraceable firearms, which are attractive to people prohibited from possessing firearms and for selling on the black market, destined to be crime guns. Not only does the gun itself and how it is acquired need to be more closely regulated, it also should not be possible to modify a semi-automatic weapon to where it fires at an alarmingly close rate to an automatic weapon. A bump stock is one of these modifications, which harnesses the weapon’s recoil and causes the weapon’s trigger to be engaged many times faster than the average human could otherwise fire. Bump stocks allow assault weapons to operate as machine guns. The Las Vegas shooter used bump stocks to fire more than 1,100 rounds in just 10 minutes, killing 58 and injuring more than 500 concertgoers on October 1, 2017, in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Machine guns are tightly regulated under the 1934 National Firearms Act that has effectively prevented their use in criminal activity and mass shootings, so why it is possible to modify a gun to almost the exact capabilities? The passage of House Bill No. 5542, would ban bump stocks, binary trigger systems and trigger cranks, all of which increase a gun’s rate of fire. With that being said, we call upon Governor Malloy, the State House, and the State Senate to pass the legislation, H.B. No. 5542 and H.B. No. 5540, banning the sales of bump stocks and regulating ghost guns. It is imperative that we pass these measures to protect our citizens. Not only do most people support them, but experts believe that they are important steps to take in the fight against gun violence. Now it is time for the Connecticut leadership to affirm, as the public already has, that the life of a child or innocent civilian is more important than someone’s semi-automatic rifle.

In previous legislation, the State of Illinois has outlined the specific language and parameters for home-based bakers. The Cottage Law stipulates all baked goods allowed and deemed safe and all baked goods not allowed such as creamed pies as one an example. The home baked items have already cleared all food safety hurdles determined by health and food safety professionals. These pre-qualified home baked items are allowed to be sold at Farmers Markets statewide, including in Whiteside County. Home bakers provide high quality and innovative products which should make our rural communities proud and more inviting. The Cupcake Law provides a cap of $1,000 of, direct, home sales per month for the home baker. This cap prevents undue competition to the professional bakery. The products our home bakers make available are in many ways superior to that which is available to the residents of rural Whiteside Co Communities. Home bakers are able to use higher quality product while taking more time to prepare and provide for specific dietary needs on demand. Home bakers are committed to the quality of their products, ingredients and committed to food safety and sanitation. Many IL businesses start small and out of a home. Squelching entrepreneurship is counterproductive to the heart of small business. HB5354 must be adopted by Whiteside County to keep this spirit alive in IL.

Put a stop to the mistreatment of immigrants just because of their legal status here in the U.S. With this petition I want everyone who isn't aware of the fact to know that we are all equal and deserve the same chances and in this case a chance at the "American Dream".

Our country's multi-billion dollar food industry is allowing that our produce is used by destructive oil companies like Chevron as a disposal site for their oil wastewater. Water samples have determined that the wastewater contains toxic chemicals, some that are linked to cancer and reproductive harm. Known for nationally sold brands like POM Wonderful, Wonderful Pistachios, and Halos mandarins, Wonderful has the political influence to stop this!

The Bangerter family farm in Farmington, which provides fresh and local produce throughout northern Utah, is in jeopardy of being lost, in order for Farmington City to relocate soccer fields that are being paved over to put in a new highway. There are many other locations where soccer fields can be put, other than a producing farm. Farmington City should look elsewhere. Farmington City should also support the Bangerter family's petition to protect the farm under the Utah Agriculture Protection Act.

Around 9:30 pm on the night of Sunday, March 18, Stephon Alonzo “Zoe” Clark was murdered by Sacramento police in his own backyard. Police fired 20 shots while his family inside the home took cover. SacPD questioned his family for several hours about what they heard before his grandmother, Sequita Thompson, dared to push the window curtain aside and saw her grandson’s body. That’s how she found out he’d been killed. Predictably, the Sacramento Police Department has done their best to criminalize Clark. First, they claimed that Clark was armed, but then their story changed and they claimed that he was holding a toolbar. It has since been revealed that the only item found nearby was his cell phone. We know that police lie and criminalize victims in order to shift blame. We cannot trust them to investigate themselves. However, there is body camera footage. Sacramento city council policy dictates that video footage and audio recordings be released within 30 days of the shooting but SacPD Chief Daniel Hahn has promised the council that the footage would be available to the public by the end of the week. We know that video footage clearly demonstrating police misconduct does not automatically lead to justice. A joint investigation between the SacPD and District Attorney Anne Marie Shubert is ongoing but we know that District Attorney Shubert has a pattern of declining to prosecute killer cops who murder Black people. The cops who murdered Dazion Flenaugh and Joseph Mann are free today. We have to let Shubert know that we are watching this case closely, that she cannot let another killer cop get away with murder, and that we want justice for Zoe. We need to demand that charges are brought in this case.

Many adolescents are experiencing lack of sleep, which can cause their brains to develop differently, due to early school start times.

Because I have seen first hand how families, many whom have been here for 20+ years, now being deported from the only home they have ever known. WE HAVE FAILED AS AMERICANS to these people we have allowed to live here, work here, and build a life here now to treat them like garbage.

The 2020 Census is offering Black and White respondents the opportunity to answer the question, "Where are you from?", giving a country of origin. This option is confusing to and exclusive of African Americans who are the Descendants of Chattel Slavery (DoCS). We are born and bred American originals, a unique ethnic identity of people who descend from the unique American institution of chattel slavery. African American DoCS need to be especially included in the 2020 U.S. Census to aid in the just distribution of resources to a group of people still suffering the affects of being property for centuries and excluded from wealth generation after enslavement. This category will give clarity to millions, including the the following respondents in this NPR interview regarding the 2020 Census: "Where are you from from?" Still, Greer says she's planning to write down "Black American" for her origins. "I consider myself a 'J.B.,' which is 'just black,' " she says. "When people ask you where you're from, and I say, 'Oh, you know, New York, Philly, Chicago, Baltimore,' it's like, 'No, but where are you from from?' " Many African-Americans who have roots in the U.S. going back centuries to ancestors forced upon these shores as enslaved people cannot answer that question. "If we're really honest with what hundreds of years of U.S. chattel slavery really meant," Greer says, "many people had to walk miles and across countries before they were shipped off." The enslavement of hundreds of thousands of African people in the U.S. cut ties to home countries for their descendants, including Chris Owens, a project engineer for an energy consulting firm based in New York City. Raised in St. Louis, Owens says for most of his life, questions about his race were straightforward. "Either you're black or you're white, at least where I'm from," he says. But after moving to Boston and later New York, he says he has been asked whether he is of Haitian or Jamaican descent. "That's even caused me to try to figure out which island I was from," Owens says. He has just over two years to keep digging into family history for an answer before the 2020 census forms come out. For now, though, if you ask him about his origins, he says he's sticking with "American." https://www.npr.org/2018/03/13/593272215/for-the-first-time-2020-census-will-ask-black-americans-about-their-exact-origin

It is time to asses why these killings are happening, for what reason, and find new measures for diffusing these situations. Performing Psychiatric evaluations will be a good start as we will be able to find the root cause of these unlawful and unjustified killings.

20 shots fired at an unarmed man is NOT being in fear for your life, it is murder!!! No matter how you look at it!!! These monsters are on PAID administrative leave when they should be sitting in jail on suicide watch!!! OUR tax dollars are paying for their time off!!! We MUST all stand up for what's right and do something more then what's being done!!! Mayor of N.Y. promised to reduce the stop and frisk practice and it worked, maybe it's a start ?! I am starting this petition not because I know this young man but because I have a son of my own and am tired of explaining to him the things he cannot do as a young black man, that others take for granted. I now have to explain why he can't play in his own backyard!!! Our kids out here are being hurt and/or dying by the police almost every day, when does it stop?!?!?!