Move to Amend and Gun Safety

Will the senseless shootings at an Orlando night club, in Las Vegas, or in a Florida school trigger any
changes in the laws regulating firearms? Four years after the Newtown, Connecticut, shootings, we
don’t yet have universal background checks, limits on high-capacity magazines, or bans on military-
style semiautomatic assault weapons, despite widespread popular support for these measures.

Is our representative government more responsive to money interests, the NRA and gun
manufacturers than it is to the wishes of mere citizens?

Whatever your No. 1 cause is – gun safety, mitigating climate change, immigration reform, income
inequality, health care – you should make eliminating corporate personhood and getting money
out of politics your No. 2.

As long as the above changes are not made, even millions of youth marching in Washington will not
lead to their elimination. They may well achieve some minor changes.

Doing away with corporate personhood will eliminate a gun manufacturer’s ability to plead in a court
of law for its rights as a person against the interests and concerns of the majority of Americans who
believe that more regulation is necessary. Declaring that money is not speech will lead to the election
of legislators who will pass laws making it illegal for gun (and other) corporations to buy the loyalty of
politicians, and for the NRA to threaten legislators who disagree with their policies to be “primaried”
and spent out of office.

When the major communities of faith and ethical convictions come together to insist on passage of
the “We the People” 28th Amendment, this will clearly establish that corporations are not persons
entitled to constitutional rights and that spending money is not equivalent to exercising free speech.
Together we can powerfully motivate our Congress to build a democracy accountable to the people,
rather than to the wealthy special interests.

The Move to Amend Interfaith Caucus, that was created after the 2013 UU General Assembly, is
working with faith communities around the country to achieve that objective.

By its passage, corporations will lose their ability to use their “personhood rights” and unlimited
spending on campaigns to guide legislation and regulations to benefit themselves.

Visit www.movetoamend.org to read the text of the proposed amendment and to register your
approval for the amendment.

For more information, contact Michael Greenman at mgreenmanoh@gmail.com.