TODAY is National Gun Violence Awareness Day, and MomsRising joins the gun safety community in #WearingOrange to remember the countless lives lost and communities devastated by gun violence. Why orange? Because it’s the color of safety.

#WearOrange 2017 comes at a particularly fraught moment in our nation’s history, a time when gun violence is killing more than 90 people a day and injuring hundreds more, and a time of rising hate crimes combined with easy access to firearms in a society already saturated with enough guns to privately arm every man, woman, and child.

That’s why, this year on National Gun Violence Prevention Day, MomsRising pledges to continue fighting for solutions to reduce gun violence in all forms —and also to stand against the hate, racism, and biases behind too much of it.

***Will you pledge too?

A new President occupies the White House, who has promised to build walls and institute bans against targeted immigrant and faith communities, thereby giving his supporters (many of them armed) permission to gratify and normalize their worst and darkest prejudices.

This is a President who has signaled his full support for the gun lobby to dismantle every protection against gun violence in order to increase the presence of even more guns in our streets and neighborhoods. This is a President who has given armed authorities, including police and immigration officers, virtual carte blanche to draw their firearms as they exercise their awesome powers and act on their biases.

For instance, so far in 2017, here in America, a white man entered a bar in Olathe, Kansas, and shot two Garmin engineers from India, shouting “Go back to your country.” A white man in San Diego shot seven Black guests at a pool party, killing one. An ICE agent shot an unarmed immigrant for no apparent reason as the man answered the door at his Chicago home. And in three separate incidents, three 15-year-old boys were shot to death by police for nothing more than being young and Black. And these are just some of the stories that made it into the news.

Minority communities are often bearing the brunt of this new era of armed aggression, with hate crimes up 20% after Trump took office, proving the point that his hateful rhetoric is emboldening people to act out in horrible ways.  

For #WearOrange 2017, pledge to continue fighting for solutions to reduce gun violence in all forms. Also join MomsRising in standing against the hate, racism, and biases too often behind it.  

In America, the threat of gun violence and racism should not be nonstop, ongoing worries for families and communities. Combined, they make for a particularly toxic combination, which diminishes us as a free and democratic people. We can and must do better.

Together, we are a strong voice for a safer and more just America.