Julianne Moore has emerged in recent years as a staunch advocate of gun control, and explains her stance in a new essay she’s written for Lena Dunham’s online newsletter, Lenny.
In the essay (as reported by The Hollywood Reporter), the actress describes the epiphany she had following the tragic school shooting in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, when her daughter, then 10, asked her a question.
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“She picked up her newly acquired phone, with her carefully considered and limited number of apps and her monitored Instagram account, and asked, “Mommy, did a bunch of little kids get shot today?,'”; Moore writes.
“At that moment, it felt ridiculous to me, and irresponsible as a parent and as a citizen, that I was not doing something to prevent gun violence,”; she continues. “Simply keeping the news away from my child was putting my head in the sand.”;
As Moore points out, many of her fellow Americans hold similar views on gun control, “so why does our country have a gun murder rate 25 times that of other developed countries?”;
Related: Amy Schumer Joins Fight To Reduce Gun Violence
She asks why guns can’t be treated with the same stringent controls as automobiles: “We have made car manufacturers beholden to these measures. We have enacted speed limits and criminalized drunk driving. In the process we have reduced the auto fatality rate by nearly 40 per cent in just the past 20 years.”;
Moore also calls on like-minded readers to join Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization calls more stricter gun regulations.
“I don’t ever want to have to explain another Newtown to my kids,”; she concludes, “and neither should you.”;
