Emanuel Bronner’s mission was not a modest one: he wanted to achieve world peace. The writing on the bottle for which he became famous had a well-defined objective—he wanted to convince everyone he encountered that world peace is possible if we are willing to overcome sectarian divisions and come together under a shared set of moral values that he called the Moral ABC.
He also understood that the machinery of war was antithetical to this mission of peace. As he put it: “On Spaceship Earth, with bomb and gun, we’re All-One or None!” By which he meant that modern weapons, and the incredible destructive forces that they can unleash, make unity and peace a necessity for human survival.
The United States has a problem with gun violence. America’s gun homicide rate is more than 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population.1 On average 34 Americans are murdered with guns every day, and seven children or teens are killed by guns, every day.2
The more vulnerable and marginalized in our society are more at risk. Black men are 13 times more likely than white men to be shot and killed with guns3, and the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of the woman being killed by five times.4
We recognize self-defense and traditional uses of guns are core principals for many Americans. We are not opposed to responsible gun ownership, but believe owners and non-owners alike must work to improve our laws to protect innocent lives caught in the absence of common sense policy.
We cannot pretend this problem has no solutions. And we cannot stand by in silence as people die preventable deaths. For this reason we stand with organizations like the Brady Campaign and March For Our Lives in advocating for common-sense gun reforms, including universal background checks and a comprehensive assault weapons ban that takes weapons of war off our streets.
— David and Michael Bronner on behalf of Dr. Bronner’s
1 Richardson, Erin G., and David Hemenway, “Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States With Other High-Income Countries, 2003,” Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, published online ahead of print, June 2010
2 The Brady Campaign averaged the most recent five years of complete data (2009-2013) from death certificates and estimates of emergency room admissions available via CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, www.cdc.go/ncipc/wisqars/. Data retrieved 1.22.15.
3 “Fatal Injury Reports,” Injury Prevention & Control: Data & Statistics (WISQARS), accessed December 23, 2017, http://1.usa.gov/1plXBux.
4 Jacqueline C. Campbell, Daniel Webster, and Jane Koziol-McLain, “Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a Multisite Case Control Study,” American Journal of Public Health 93, no. 7 (June 2003)