50 MILES MORE 

The 50 Miles More was a 2018 protest march led by youth activists that started in Worcester on August 23rd and ended August 26th with a rally at Smith & Wesson in Springfield. The march and rally aimed to keep gun reform issues in the national spotlight and to draw attention to the fact that young people feel unsafe in their neighborhoods, classrooms, movie theaters, restaurants and homes.

Students targeted Smith & Wesson for their role in producing and selling weapons used in many mass shootings –

These mass shootings included the tragedies in Parkland, San Bernardino, and Aurora – and for their weapons’ contribution to daily gun violence in communities across the country. The students asked that Smith & Wesson:

  1. Cease the manufacturing and distribution of all weapons outlawed under the 2004 Massachusetts Assault Weapons Ban, including weapons under Attorney General Maura Healey’s copycat weapon ban enforcement.
  2. Donate $5,000,000 to research violence caused by Smith & Wesson weapons and monitor illegal use of Smith & Wesson weapons to offset the lack of federal research funding for the gun violence epidemic.

Smith & Wesson did not respond to the student demands.

Stop Handgun Violence is a non-profit organization committed to the prevention of gun violence

UPDATE

Stop Handgun Violence is committed to gun violence prevention

In 2021, SHV advocated for legislation that would prohibit already banned assault-style weapons and large capacity feeding devices over 10 rounds from being manufactured in Massachusetts.

“Military-style assault weapons are designed for the sole purpose of efficiently killing many people at once. If private citizens no longer have access to these kinds of assault weapons, then fewer people will die due to mass shootings,” said bill sponsor Representative Marjorie Decker of Cambridge. “We must decide what we value more — the freedom to live without fear of being shot in a mass shooting, or the ‘freedom’ to allow the manufacture of military-style weapons in our name, in our State. We don’t allow these assault weapons to be made and sold here in Massachusetts to private citizens, so why should they be sold in other states to private citizens?”

Read the full text of the bill re-filed in 2023: An Act to Stop Mass Shootings