Catch that warm, fuzzy feeling

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Seen on Capitol Hill:
MoJo’s March/April poster-pullout (at left), which compares federal safety standards for the domestic manufacture of firearms (none) with those for teddy bears (many). In March, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., distributed the “The Right to bears & arms” to every member of the House. As we went to press, Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, was about to do the same for his colleagues in the Senate. The pullout also decks the halls of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution.
Other sightings:
Washington state legislators Lorraine Wojahn and Vivian Caver passed out the poster to their fellow legislators before a March debate on gun control. The guns vs. teddy comparison has turned up in the Children’s Defense Fund’s annual report on the state of America’s children; the Washington, D.C.-based Violence Policy Center’s groundbreaking study, “Cease Fire”; and countless news reports and editorials.
And coming to a bus near you:
On May 21, a benefit concert at the Elbo Room in Chicago, featuring the Charming Beggars and other Happy Tails recording artists, will raise money to exhibit MoJo’s anti-handgun-violence stamps on public transportation in selected cities.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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