The Gun Safety & Emergency Preparedness Platform

The Gun Safety platform is the first ever cross-referencing database using multiple gun related datasets to help advocates coordinate actions and prepare for future gun related incidents.

The platform provides 3 major functionalities:

• Inform: The application allows users to visualize, contribute and export data about local gun laws. The goal is to place all of the appropriate information in one place to combat the abundance of scattered and disinformation available on the internet. 
• Report: The app offers a user interface that allows citizens to generate comments, share information and suggest further investigation on specific registered gun vendors. The goal is to provide concerned citizens with a tool that will help them actively monitor activities in the gun marketplace.
• Prepare: The most dynamic part of the app is the ability to create and disseminate emergency response plans via text and web based maps to help guide people during active shooter situations. 

As most of us know, communities across America have experienced devastating losses due to the proliferation of legal and illegal firearms in the hands of the dangerous people. We are not here to propose that our application can change the laws; however, we are confident that our tool can help  people get better coordinated around this issue and more prepared for future events. 

Therefore, we are proposing an application and web platform that brings all gun advocates, victims and survivors together under one coordinate effort to address the gun problem and minimize the amount of future damage to our communities. 

The application will allow users to report problematic gun vendors, prepare emergency response plans and share best pracitices when ti comes to advo ating for gun violence nad preparing for active shoter scenarios. By providing the space for peopel to have these discussions we feel that we can move the needle forward to create safer and more educated communities aroudn the issue sof gun violence. 

We envision our platform to be a one-stop-shop for all people who are interested in advocating for better gun control in their local communities.

We envision our user base to come from 1 of 3 sectors: 1)non-porfit/advocacy groups, 2) concerned citizens, 3) schools/institutions.

In preliminary focus groups with school officials and other tech companies we have been able to get a better understanding of what schools are most concerned with when it comes to emergency management training in an active shooter situation. 

Based on our current functionality we believe our main users would be concerned citizens who are looking to better protect themselves, their children and their communities. 

Our solution uses a three-pronged approach to address the far-reaching issue of gun violence in urban communities. 

Our solution is a mobile and web based application that allows individuals, institutions such as schools and universities and any other entities to create and make available to the general public their emergency response plans in the case of an active shooter situation. 

We are still in the prototyping phase of this project and think we have a great potential to scale up and allow the mapping resource and user interface to all people affected by gun voilence, thus creating a substnatial following that can then act in accordance to address this issue. 

If selected our team would use this to perform outreach and expand our tool to help prespare schools and other idetnified institutions to secure thier emergency management plans.