Josh Sugarmann
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Josh Sugarmann is the executive director and founder of the Violence
Policy Center (VPC). Prior to founding the VPC, Sugarmann was a press
officer in the national office of Amnesty International USA and was
the communications director for the National Coalition to Ban
Handguns.

He is known for taking the position that gun violence should be
approached as a broadbased public health issue as opposed to solely a
crime issue and that firearms should be held to the same health and
safety standards as other consumer products. This is detailed in the
1994 publication Cease Fire: A Comprehensive Strategy to Reduce
Firearms Violence, which he co-authored. Noting that only two
consumer products sold in America are not regulated for health and
safety--guns and tobacco--he argues that firearms should be regulated
by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Sugarmann writes frequently on gun violence issues, including two
books. The first, National Rifle Association: Money, Firepower &
Fear, an expose of the National Rifle Association, was published in
1992 by National Press Books. The second, Every Handgun is Aimed at
You: The Case for Banning Handguns,was published in 2000 by The New
Press and details the arguments in support of banning private handgun
possession in the United States.

Some credit Sugarmann for coining the term "assault weapon", which is
derived from the designation Sturmgewehr 44 (literally meaning "storm
rifle" but most often translated as "assault rifle"), a style of
rifle conceptualized in Nazi Germany during World War II. Sugarmann
uses the term because he argues that a semi-automatic rifle is
capable of rapid fire that makes it almost as lethal as a fully
automatic firearm such as assault rifles. The impression that
Sugarmann originated the term may stem from a 1988 study he authored,
Assault Weapons and Accessories in America, which was the first study
to look at semiautomatic assault weapons. However, variations on the
term were in use in the gun press before Sugarmann's 1988 study. [1]

In spite of his anti-gun activism, Josh Sugarmann is a licensed
firearm dealer and current holder of a Federal Firearms License
(License Number: 1-54-XXX-XX-XX-00725; Expires: 03/01/2011) which is
registered at the Violence Policy Center headquarters in Washington
D.C.[1] (cf. ATF's (https://www.atfonline.gov/fflezcheck/)FFLeZCheck
web site).


Ed