Acknowledgements

Liberal Gun Owners would like to take this time to acknowledge the contributions that have made this report possible. First, we would like to say a most sincere thank you to the LGO online discussion community for their ongoing support and enthusiasm in our forums. We appreciate the knowledge, maturity and humor that our forum members bring to the community, each and every day. All should know that we are heartened our community and will continue to strengthen our efforts to maintain the LGO structure.  Second, we would like to thank the LGO forum administrators and moderators for their continued dedication to delivering an unmatched experience in online gun culture. Third, we would like to thank LGO leadership and the LGO development core for helping to establish Liberal Gun Owners as a sincere organization with strong goals both inside of gun culture and outside of gun culture - in the wider world.

Special Acknowledgements
 

Liberal Gun Owners would like to thank The Liberal Gun Club for taking on the enormity of creating a nationwide, instructive architecture for center-to-left gun enthusiasts. The effort on your part is unprecedented, innovative, and completely necessary in America. The struggle, diligence, and thought leadership is not lost on us. We will continue to do what we can to support you.

Liberal Gun Owners would like to thank firearms enthusiast and Wake Forest sociologist David Yamane for framing gun culture in an open, innovative manner. We have found David's work and approach to be informative and extraordinarily helpful.

Curtis Marean, University of Arizona

Liberal Gun Owners would like to thank the wider gun culture, along with all of the Conservatives, Libertarians, and Independents who have fought, culturally, for the second amendment. We would like to thank you for establishing a firearms industry and a firearms market in America. We acknowledge that we are benefitting from your efforts and sacrifice. Much of the reason why we are able to have this experience and ultimately, have the position to criticize you heavily, is because of your presence. We recognize that. It certainly is not a position made directly possible by the modern liberal and the modern progressive. However, because of our cultural observations, we will now be in the business of criticizing you, full time. We acknowledge your unyielding support of tradition. However, that same unyielding trait has made you extraordinarily susceptible to cultural issues, blindness, and weakness. While we know that you will disagree, we observe that these weaknesses are on track to threaten the second amendment's place in American society. The current state of affairs in wider gun culture, and particularly with the NRA, is starting to underserve the second amendment. Your tendency to isolate and to participate in corporatized politics, propaganda and all-or-nothing approaches is officially a problem. Are modern progressives a problem too? You bet. However, the current climate in gun culture is, ultimately, starting to underserve the spirit of the American gun owner - despite claiming to deliver the opposite. As such, while gun culture efforts appear to you to be strengthening the situation, the irrationality involved in the approach is creating issues throughout gun culture itself. Gun culture's solidarity is weakening. We acknowledge you, but we will be fully dedicated to making the case for these essential criticisms. We are pushing for significant changes in gun culture. In any case, we thank you.
 

Most importantly, Liberal Gun Owners would like to thank John Van Dreal, School Psychologist and Director of Safety and Risk Management in the Salem-Keizer Public School District in Oregon. John is the architect of the Salem-Keiser Threat Assessment System (STAS). After the Columbine massacre only two school professionals in America took it upon themselves to take the early data and recommendations available to create an effective, pro-student, thorough system of prevention for dealing with threats inside of school culture. John is one of these people. Unbeknownst to most of America, John has been overseeing a working, effective preventative model since 1999. His work, real-world experience and insight has been invaluable in helping our humble gun organization to understand the critical cultural phenomenon that this report is dedicated to: school shootings.