Over the weekend (May 14-15), 13 people were killed and 35 were wounded in five mass shooting attacks across the country: a supermarket in a predominately black neighborhood in Buffalo (NY); a park in Winston-Salem (NC); a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods (CA), a flea market in Houston (TX), and in downtown Milwaukee (WI).

Meanwhile, this week Mexico reached the grim milestone of 100,000 disappeared people and May is already the most violent month of the year.

White supremacist ideology is deadly – even more so when combined with easy access to guns. Drug and human traffickers are more dangerous when they access guns.  And corrupt, violent police and military units in Mexico become powerful when they receive guns imported from the United States, despite their well known history of abuse and violence.

While families and communities mourn the pain this violence has caused, gun companies are planning to avoid, once again, all responsibility and put all blame on Congress and governments in both countries.

Since 2012, when Global Exchange organized the Caravan for Peace bringing together victims of the “Drug War” in Mexico with victims of gun violence in the U.S., we have addressed the lack of sufficient U.S. gun laws as a cause of growing violence in both countries. We even proved on video how easy it was to buy a U.S. gun at the border.

Over the last decade gun companies have done nothing to stop the flow of guns. And the United States has failed to pass stricter end user controls to U.S. gun exports – in fact under Trump it loosened them.

The consequence, thousands of human lives are lost to gun violence on both sides of the border. Firearms have now become the leading cause of death in U.S. children (1-19) over vehicle accidents and cancer.

Today (May 16th), when he spoke in Buffalo, President Biden called for an assault weapons ban. Let’s make sure this time Congress acts!

Congress could immediately save lives by passing HR 1808 to ban assault weapons and by requiring stricter end user certificates for gun exports that identify the police or military unit in Mexico that will receive these weapons.

Hatred, white supremacy, criminal violence and corrupt police with guns are the greatest threat to our communities.

Join us in saying: Enough! Stop the sale of military-style weapons to our communities on both sides of the border!