What They Do
Arms with Ethics speaks to all sides on gun violence by developing police-led strategies that help build a network of consensus-building community safety partners that includes gun owners and gun sellers. The organization is developing programs to reduce the illegal flow and illegal use of guns by focusing on the estimated 500,000 guns that are stolen each year from homes, cars and gun stores.
Gun theft prevention as a single issue that brings everyone to the table: gun owners, because they don’t want their guns stolen; gun retailers, because they want to protect their businesses; people who live in impacted communities, because they don’t want stolen guns used in crimes in their neighborhood; law enforcement, because they want to protect communities and their officers from the crimes committed with stolen guns.
Collaborating with law enforcement leadership organizations at national, state and local levels, AwE gun theft prevention projects can be replicated across the country, leading to a significant reduction in the number of guns stolen. This will empower police leaders to continue to work with gun owners and gun dealers to develop and drive additional successful gun violence reduction strategies.
What We Love
Arms with Ethics is working on an old problem in a new way with new allies. This relatively young organization—it was founded in 2014—has gained promising early traction, including working with dozens of public safety agencies across the country and earning an endorsement from the Major Cities Chiefs Association. It’s committed to addressing gun violence through program models that simultaneously reduce the illegal use of guns while creating frameworks that bring all sides together to work on solutions.
Often the debate about guns is so divisive that it prevents progress on even the most common sense solutions and alienates key allies — including police and gun owners. Unfortunately, there is very little focus on gun theft prevention at a national level. By focusing on gun theft prevention, AwE has identified a gap that needs to be filled and by doing so is exemplifying what police, gun owners and gun dealers, working together, can achieve. We’re eager to see what Arms with Ethics does as it grows.
