With acts of gun violence in the news on a seemingly daily basis, the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety has released a new video with a simple message: “We can end gun violence.” The video cuts between everyday people and what seems to be half of Hollywood — including Amy Schumer, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Aniston, and more — as they deliver the statement.
Everytown used a collaborative video app called Peepsqueeze Inc., which enabled the organization to put together the montage. The format made it possible to feature such a massive (and star-studded) group of people. A mix of everyday people, including moms and survivors of gun violence, are featured alongside cultural figures like President Barack Obama, filmmaker Spike Lee, and actors Julianne Moore, Sofia Vergara, and Michael J. Fox, among others.
Moore chairs Everytown’s Creative Council, so she may have had a hand in rounding up the many A-list participants. Finding gun safety activists in Hollywood evidently wasn’t much of a challenge, at least based on the number that appear in We Can End Gun Violence. Those that contributed to the video have often spoken out on the issue in the past.
Schumer, for example, has been very vocal about gun violence since a showing of her latest movie, Trainwreck, was the scene of a deadly mass shooting in July. She has since teamed up with her cousin Sen. Chuck Schumer to push for stricter gun legislation. Similarly, Lee is another a proponent of gun control, making it the subject of his upcoming Amazon original movie, Chi-Raq.
Everytown created the video to show that Americans are rallying together and fighting back against gun violence. “The fact that Americans are 20 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in any other developed country is unacceptable,” said Colin Goddard, senior policy advocate for Everytown and a survivor of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, in a press release.
The nonprofit plans to update the We Can End Gun Violence video and is inviting Americans to submit their own video messages at WeCanEndGunViolence.org.
