Emma Stone, Melissa McCarthy join celebrities to #RejectTheNRA
Celebrities are banding together to #RejectTheNRA in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting — the deadliest to date on U.S. soil — and they have a very specific plan to do so.
Melissa McCarthy, Emma Stone, Bill Hader, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, John Slattery, Sheryl Crow, and Adam Scott are some of the stars featured in a new PSA that targets efforts to roll back safety laws on gun silencers and concealed carry reciprocity legislation.
The Creative Council for Everytown for Gun Safety, which Moore started in 2015, announced a plan to send one million phone calls to Congress until the next vote in 2018 to urge representatives to reject the agenda of the National Rifle Association. The PSA offers simple instructions on how to do so by connecting callers with Everytown, the gun advocacy nonprofit, and guidelines on what to say.
Other celebrities joining the new PSA include Jack Antonoff, Kathryn Hahn, Samuel Harris, Zazie Beetz, Cynthia Rowley, Natalie Morales, Moby, and Laura Dern. All of them urge Congress to oppose the SHARE Act, which, as they say, would “roll back gun silencer safety laws” and “could make mass shootings even more deadly.” They also highlight concealed reciprocity legislation, which would allow gun owners to carry firearms across state lines.
“I feel really strongly that the time has come to reject the NRA’s dangerous agenda and put the safety of all Americans first,” Beetz and McCarthy said in the video. “We should not make it easy for people with dangerous histories to buy silencers,” Moore added.
Moore was incited to be a gun control advocate by the Sandy Hook massacre, which left 20 children and six adults fatally shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012.
“At that moment, it felt ridiculous to me, and irresponsible as a parent and as a citizen, that I was not doing something to prevent gun violence,” she explained in an essay. “Simply keeping the news away from my child was putting my head in the sand. I wasn’t helping her, or anyone else, by doing that. So I decided to learn more.”