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At the Masters Tournament: Everytown, Georgia Moms Run Full Page Ads in the Augusta Chronicle Urging Governor Deal to Veto Guns on Campus Bill

4.8.2016

ATLANTA – Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and the Georgia chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a part of Everytown for Gun Safety, today announced that it would run full page ads in the Augusta Chronicle timed with the Masters Tournament. The ad, viewable here and running Saturday and Sunday, urges Governor Deal to veto H.B. 859, legislation that would force Georgia’s colleges and universities to allow guns on campus. The ad highlights the overwhelming faculty and student opposition to the idea. Everytown ran a TV ad earlier this month in Atlanta to press for a veto.

“As attention centers on Augusta and The Masters tees off, we want business leaders visiting Augusta to know that Georgians are still waiting for our governor to veto guns on campus,” said Michelle Haberland, a professor at Georgia Southern University and a volunteer with the Georgia chapter of Moms Demand Action. “We want Georgia to attract the top businesses and academic talent. Compromising public safety shouldn’t be par for the course in Georgia – we need Governor Deal to stand with campus communities and the vast majority of his constituents who don’t want guns on campus.”

Polling has shown that 78 percent of Georgians oppose allowing guns on campus. In March, members of the Georgia chapter of Moms Demand Action and allies delivered more than 20,000 signatures of Georgians opposing the bill. The Moms Demand Action volunteers – representatives of the more than 120,000 Everytown supporters in the state – were joined by university students and faculty to deliver the simple message that campuses are safer without armed students, faculty and visitors.

Last year, Georgia was one of seventeen states that rejected guns on campus legislation. Texas and Idaho are two of the only states to pass guns on campus bills in recent years and they are already experiencing negative consequences. Just two weeks after Idaho’s guns on campus bill went into effect, a professor shot himself in the foot during class. And in Texas, renowned professors have announced that they will leave the UT system to take jobs in other states, while many of the educators who have remained in Texas have said that the law is undermining professors’ ability to teach. What’s more, Texas will have to endure skyrocketing insurance costs as a result of the law that will cut into research budgets.