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Causes: Children & Youth, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy, Crime & Law, Crime Prevention, Health, Public Health, Youth Violence Prevention
Mission: Guns killed nearly 49,000 Americans in 2021. Since 1988, the Violence Policy Center (VPC) has worked to stop gun violence through research, education, advocacy, and collaboration. Approaching gun violence as a public health issue, as opposed to solely a crime issue, we inform the press and public about the impact of gun violence on their daily lives, expose the profit-driven marketing and lobbying activities of the firearms industry and gun lobby, offer unique technical expertise to policymakers, organizations, and advocates on the federal, state, and local levels, and work for policy changes that save lives. The VPC firmly believes the answer to reducing gun violence lies in applying the decades-long lessons of public health injury prevention and consumer product safety regulation.
Programs: VPC program activities focus on two areas. 1) Increasing public understanding of gun violence as a public health issue and how specific categories of gun death impact different segments of our nation's population. Our work: reveals the wide range of gun violence's impact on our nation (e.g., by race, ethnicity, sex, age, region, state, etc.); aids national, state, and local groups in promoting their own violence prevention agendas; and, informs, engages, and supports members of impacted communities. 2) Exposing how the gun industry exploits its unique lack of health and safety regulation while working to hold gunmakers accountable for their actions. Our ongoing research not only reveals how the firearms industry continues to innovate for increased lethality (often involving crossover military technology), but also documents how, following a trail blazed by the tobacco industry, gunmakers are targeting communities of color, women, and children as potential new customers.
Simple enough to say this organization has a website filled with distorted facts.. Less than 10% of the donations are utilized, the rest is expenses. Requesting their 990 they asked for money and postage. Three red flags for a person who is claiming to help stop violence but attacks the Bill of Rights and is vague about how his organization is going to do that on $50,000 a year with a $700,000 overhead. This one stinks.
Review from Guidestar
