PRESS RELEASE

WHITNEY/STRONG WELCOMES OHIOANS FOR GUN SAFETY (OGS) COMMUNITY

“Better Together” OGS dissolving, joining forces with Tristate gun safety advocacy group

Cincinnati (June 24, 2021) – Six years and thousands of signatures later, Ohioans for Gun Safety are dissolving their organization, effective June 30, 2021. Core team founders Anne Wallace, PhD and Susan Reis began the organization in 2015. OGS grew into a broad-based, grass-roots coalition of approximately 3,100 donors and volunteers focused on collecting signatures to present common sense background checks for gun safety to the Ohio legislature.

 “We firmly believe,” offers Dr. Wallace, a clinical psychologist and researcher, “that as Ohioans and Americans, we must balance our rights and responsibilities to stop gun violence.  Prior to the pandemic we were on-track to submit our citizen-initiated statute for common sense background checks with the necessary signatures to state legislators. Ongoing health and safety concerns mean that large scale signature collection will not be feasible for the foreseeable future.”

Anne continues, “Grass-roots campaign efforts like ours, where the primary focus is a local ballot initiative, need the right political environment and strong partners for success. Whitney/Strong has made great strides at the local and national level in several key areas of legislation, education and research, and we’re excited to join forces with Whitney/Strong in supporting their initiatives.”

Whitney Austin, executive director and co-founder of Whitney/Strong, offers, “We’re grateful for the work of Ohioans for Gun Safety, and to be entrusted by OGS and its leadership team after just three short years is testament to the work that our supporters and volunteers have accomplished. Our community will be better together.”

The Whitney/Strong Organization was co-founded by Whitney and Waller Austin in 2018, just weeks after Whitney was shot 12 times on her way to work on Fountain Square in Cincinnati. Comprised of gun violence survivors, gun owners and advocates who are concerned about lives lost to all forms of gun violence, Whitney/Strong is focused on responsible gun ownership and ending gun violence. 

Whitney/Strong works toward solutions that produce real results, like universal background checks and laws that temporarily remove a firearm in a moment of crisis. The organization takes a non-partisan, pragmatic approach to legislation in Ohio, Kentucky and at the federal level; acts on data to implement education opportunities; and funds research to find data-driven steps to reverse the pervasiveness of gun violence.

“We know that if we want change at the federal level, we need support from a bipartisan set of Senators,” shares Whitney. “So we set out to meet with as many as possible to advocate for change. From late April to the end of May, we met with the staffs of Senators Cornyn (R-TX), King (I-ME), Manchin (D-WV) Portman (R-OH), Romney (R-UT), Tillis (R-NC), Toomey (R-PA), and Young (R-IN). And this is just the beginning. We are working to lay the groundwork for the Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention Bill in the next Kentucky Legislative Session. And we meet weekly with members of the Ohio legislature to determine the best route of action for the passage of responsible gun ownership bills.”

Since 2018, Whitney/Strong:

  • Hosted the first hearing on gun safety legislation in Frankfort in over a decade and with a bipartisan coalition of Kentucky State Senators.

  • Joined Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to announce the STRONG Ohio legislation, a response to the community call of “Do Something” after the Dayton Oregon District shooting in 2019.

  • Distributed over 12,000 gun locks across Kentucky and Ohio in 2020 thanks to partnerships with the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

  • Trained over 225 neighbors and 50 medical students at “Save a Life”, an evidence-based gun violence prevention program for communities with disproportionate impact; Whitney/Strong partners with several organizations to share gun safety and suicide prevention training, including the Cincinnati Police Department, 1N5.org, the University of Louisville, St. Stephen Baptist Church and Christ Emmanuel Christian Fellowship.

She concludes, “The instances of gun-related violence and mass shootings continues to spiral, and the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that unintended shooting deaths by kids went up 30% during the pandemic. That’s a siren, and bringing OGS into the fold will amplify our voice and enhance our reach. With now nearly 5,000 supporters on both sides of the river, we are confident that our legislative advocacy, education and research efforts will be even more successful.”

Learn more about the Whitney/Strong Organization at www.whitneystrong.org; view this announcement at www.whitneystrong.org/press-release


Media Contacts:

Robbie Jennings Michels | Whitney/Strong
513.673.8200

Jess Willard | Precision New Media
614.214.9189