>> good morning, everybody, thank you for joining us this morning, in the bill gram auditor um and we are joined this morning by these gentleman up here but i wanted to especially thank our district attorney george gescon for joining us and being part of this wonderful effort that we are announcing today with our technology community and certainly with the families of sandy hook. i would like to thank the families who flew all the way here from newtown, connecticut for joining us here today in san francisco. and while you are far away from home, i hope that you feel welcomed in our city. as a father of two girls myself, i can't imagine the pain and grief that you have

suffered these past three months. and i have profound respect for your courage and for your commitment, for turning this grief into action. the tragic and horrifying events in sandy hook elementary school, touched every american, a tragedy of this magnitude brings along with it the pain, the shock, and the disbelief. and it forces all of us to ask the question how can we prevent such terrible events? how do we protect our children? our youth, our residents? for san francisco, it is very important for us to continue to have an open dialogue regarding gun violence so that we can answer these questions ourselves. today, we honored the three-month anniversary of the tragic mass shootings at sandy

hook, elementary school, with technology leaders from san francisco and all over the bay area, joining the sandy hook promise. the launch, the promises innovation initiative and i'm honored to join you at this moment of change. from sandy hook to san francisco, our entire nation is impacted by gun violence on a daily basis. earlier today, the san franciscos family whos who are also impacted by gun violence met privately with the newtown families and shared their grief and hope for a better tomorrow. thank you for joining us today. i have worked with conway, in many capacities to create a environment that supports innovation and we are in many regards the innovation capitol of the world and i am so proud to see this effort launched

here today. as mayor, i have focused on jobs, as a top priority and making sure that our youth get quality education and training them to be able to compete for the jobs of the 21st century economy. the fact is and i have said this often, you can't give a job to a dead youth. you can't tell that youth not to lose hope. and that they can succeed no matter where you come from for too long. we have seen too much violence in our communities and it must end. yesterday i signed into law the nation's first ban on possession of halopoint ammunition in san francisco. we worked closely with supervisor cohen to introduce this legislation. these extra deadly bullets have no place in our streets. we are also creating an early warning system to alert us when individuals make massive purchases of ammunition, because even if there is a

remote possibility we can prevent another tragedy, we are morally bound to do so. and we must support president obama and senator finestien comprehensive effort to reform the gun laws, i support state and federal effort to keep the weapons off of our streets and out of our homes. i have directed our city agencies and law enforcement officials to move towards plans of action, to prioritize and create solutions that impact policy changes and take aggressive actions against the moment egregious types of gun violence and we are working hard and making more plans for more deeper, more wider gun buy back programs and events that will take place later this year. but no single mayor can stop gun violence alone. if we work together, as a city, as a community, as a region, as

a state, and now, as importantly as a nation, if we work together as a nation, we can make real impact. forget the polls. forget the politics. forget the threats of this lobbying group or that lobbying group. we are doing what is necessary and what is the right thing to do. and we are not going to make any excuses for why we can't get it done. it is time to take a stand and it is time to stand for families. and that is the promise that we make to it the families of sandy hook. that is why we are here today. i would like to thank lawn and all of our technology leaders for exporting one of our top, in fact, it is the city's major asset. our spirit of innovation. and launching into a national issue that demands immediate attention and it effects cities

in every community across our nation. thank you for joining us this morning for this announcement, and i would at this time like to introduce the founder of the sandy hook promise, mr. tim macrus. >> good morning, my name is... we had a little bit of a logistical change and my name is lee show and i am the co-founder of the sandy hook promise and a member of the executive committee and thank you mayor lee for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us. and the mayor knows the primary responsible of the government is to keep the citizens safe and thank you all for being here. i would like to start with a little background on sandy hook, promise and who we are and what we are determined to do and why we are here today. to understand the devastation

of december 14th, the shootings and origins of sandy hook promise, it is helpful to understand a little bit about newtown itself, it is a small town. it has an old fashioned sense of community. people live in newtown, because it is a great place to raise a family. that is why we moved there. both of my kids went to sandy hook elementary. my wife is a 6th grade teacher in town, two of the students killed that day lived in my small neighborhood. the gunman and his mother lived a street over from us. one of these precious children killed hawkly whose mother is here today lived across the street from the gunman. last friday would have been dillon's 7th birthday. it was a snow day, i was traveling and my wife and children were home but i

received a text message from them rather than building a snow man out of a foot of snow that had fallen, they build a cup cake and with food coloring colored the icing purple which has dillan's favorite color. 13-year-old, children, and the boy, first grader across the street whose face is on the cover of the new york times on december 15th, they should be building snow men, they should not be building memorials. to lose so many people who are young so quickly in such a mall town, it is impossible to get your mind around it, there is just too much loss and for the family, that loss is just immeasurable. >> just a couple of days after the shooting, after many discussions, after asking so many questions, i asked people to follow through, to keep the discussion going, i sent an e-mail in the middle of the

night to my family and neighbors. i asked them to join me the next day to help the community and nation to stop this madness and from that last night e-mail sandy promise was born and today we stand here on the 3-month anniversary with a mission that is two-fold. first, to support those in our community who have experienced so much loss, and to help that community heal. second, to do all that we can to make this world, our communities our nation, safer for other kids and other families. there is just too many of these horrible shootings and not just in sandy hook, in san francisco, character, and miami and heartford, bridge port, and new haven and as recently as yesterday in new york. many americans accept that this is just the way that things are.

there is some defender of the status quo who tell us that these massacres are just a price of liberty. but we are determined to break this vicious cycle of tragedy in action and indifference on focusing on school safety as well as our family and community. >> and that is what is so exciting about today. today, does mark the three-month anniversary of the tragedy at sandy hook elementary. but today also marks the beginning of an important new chapter in the fight against gun violence. but we certainly would like to see action in our government, to address gun violence, we can't just leave it to the politicians. legislation will offer some help of solutions but washington can't solve it all. we the people we have an obligation to look in wards to reflect on what we can do, what

we want, what we need. how we want to be treated. and how we want to treat other people. for most of the individuals expands to our families, our community and our nation. and we as a nation have a proud tradition of innovation, and as part of this journey, we have joined with leaders and thinkers of the tech community to ask a new question. how can we harness the innovation, ideas and technology to address the causes of gun violence so we can make our families and communities safer? >> here we are at the uhb of technology and innovation to leverage the great linkers and collective minds that have become synonomous with ingenuity to make our places a safe place to live. >> we are joined with the committee to reduce gun violence that will become a

project. sandy hook promise, innovation initiative. and in the days immediately after the december 14th tragedy, leaders from the tech community, including ron con way and others have shown incredible support for newtown. we are so grateful for their support and we are eager to start working alongside with them to innovate our way to a safer nation. with that, i would like to introduce ron con way. >> thank you. i want to first recognize the families in the front row. we have three families from sandy hook itself, families who lost children, in the tragedy. and then, we also have three local families. and all of you are national heroes. and instead of being bitter,

after you lost your children, you are taking action to make the world a better place. you are national heroes. i am new to this issue. i became friends with gabby giffords last year, my good friend, larine jobs introduced me to gabby and mark and we instantly became friends. my wife and i started doing work on gabby and mark's effort which was then the institute for civil discourse but has now converted to being more active on the violence issues in america. because we are friends, i invited mark and gabby to our home for our holiday party, which coincidentally was on december 14th. when gabby arrived at my home and in my home that night, were

literally the leaders of all of the great tech companies in the bay area. and we had our two great mayors, willie brown and ed lee. and the minute that they saw gabby they said ron, get everyone's attention here. we can make 200 people be quiet. we have to make a tribute to what happened today in sandy hook, and a tribute to gabby. and during that tribute which was pallpable, i could tell that the tech community was going to do something. and we did. on december 15th, we started an ad hoc committee of tech volunteers, many of them luminaries in the industry. and we convened three subcommittees that went to work.

and we had a defining conference call on december 17th, 72 hours after the tragedy. there were 150 people on that call. 50 of them gathered together in an office in san francisco. and we took action. we resolved that we were going to do something, we convened into the subcommittees that very quickly rallied around the governor of connecticut asked for a moment of silence on the one-week anniversary of the tragedy. so we rallied around that and attracted hundreds of thousands of participates by signing a petition on causes, that i launched, and then we also used some of our tactics from social media, and blacked out over