Julianne Moore: “The Moment Gun Control Got Personal"

She’s lent her voice to issues from women’s rights to same-sex parenting, but actress Julianne Moore has a new – and personal – cause that she wants you to know about.

In an essay for Lena Dunham’s Lenny newsletter today, the Oscar-winning actress reveals how the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting prompted her to get serious about gun control.

Moore recalls trying to shield her daughter, then 10, from the horrifying news that 20 primary-school children and 6 adults had been killed.

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Julianne Moore. Photo: Getty

It was December 14, 2012, and, as Moore explains, her 10-year-old daughter was with her on a movie set in Queens.

“I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the news away from my daughter forever, but I didn’t want her to hear it accidentally,” she wrote. "I figured I would tell her when we came home and her brother and father were there. I wanted to explain it and not scare her.

"So I kept the radio off in the car, the TV off in the trailer. I asked hair and makeup, the crew, and the other actors not to mention it, and we got though the day. And then we got home. She picked up her newly acquired phone, with her carefully considered and limited number of apps and her monitored Instagram account, and asked, 'Mommy, did a bunch of little kids get shot today?'

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“At that moment, it felt ridiculous to me, and irresponsible as a parent and as a citizen, that I was not doing something to prevent gun violence. Simply keeping the news away from my child was putting my head in the sand. I wasn't helping her, or anyone else, by doing that."

Moore made it her mission to educate herself on the facts and stats underlining the gun debate (read: women in the United States are 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than women in any other developed nation), and she’s urging her fellow US citizens to join her stand.

“We need you to continue to turn the tide on gun violence. And I know that we can do it together. I don't ever want to have to explain another [Sandy Hook] to my kids, and neither should you.”

Head to everytown.org for more information