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Sarah Clements is the self-described “Daughter of Sandy Hook survivor, student activist for safer communities, gun violence prevention advocate.” She wrote the following Open Letter to Amy Schumer:

Dear Amy Schumer,

This week, #Aurora and #Lafayette were trending on Twitter at the same time; one tragedy was just closing in court and one was just beginning in a theater. All of this transpired on social media just as we marked the one month anniversary since a mass shooting in #Charleston — yes, that was a hashtag, too . . .

All of this may seem like it’s playing out on your computer — a safe world away from where you live and work in Hollywood. But as a woman, a daughter and sister, a national figure, and a role model, you have a real stake in gun violence happening all around you.

Your movie — which was so well-received, so brilliant, so you — will now forever have this shooting attached to it. You’ve been caught in the middle of our country’s terrifying, unending war with itself, our sick and twisted relationship with the gun lobby, which tells us we need guns for anyone, anywhere, anytime. Search your movie “Trainwreck” on Google and a scroll-down suggestion will now be “Trainwreck shooting.”

A showing of your film — an honest, unapologetic celebration of women’s rights to our bodies, decisions, and independence — was the place a middle-aged man who, “opposed to women having a say in anything,” chose to commit a mass shooting.

I know the guilt, the sadness, the hole in your heart you’re feeling. I know the crushing anxiety you have for Jillian Johnson and Mayci Breaux and their families. I know the sudden feeling that you are not safe anywhere anymore, the numbness that whisks through your limbs and makes you forget that you’re human and that you’re in control. I know all of this. Not because I was in your exact shoes, but because I own a different make of them.

2012 was the worst year of my life. It was the year America saw the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the shooting in Aurora, the shooting at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, the shooting of Jordan Davis, the shooting at the mall in Portland, and the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

My mother survived that last one.

Six of her colleagues — all women — were killed, as were 20 first-graders. After the shooting, I dedicated my life’s work to gun violence prevention, and what I noticed immediately was that women are taking the reins in the movement. From the voices of mothers who lost their children to those of daughters who lost their mothers. From the calls to action by young women on campuses to women who work and are raising children they want to protect, in communities of all types. Women have truly begun to lead the gun violence prevention movement — and they are winning.

Women are our teachers, our protectors, our shielders. Women weep in public and in private for the lives we’ve lost, and they’re not afraid to scream at the cameras and go toe-to-toe with monsters who perpetuate these crimes on the streets and in boardrooms. Women are very simply the ultimate moral base in our battles for peace and justice throughout the world.

Women also bear the brunt of the harassment and violence perpetrated against our movement. The hatred and trolling of women fighting for gun reform is specifically twisted to become gendered threats and attacks. They reference rape, “setting us in our place,” obeying men and shutting us up, and overall they simply exemplify the worst of a patriarchy obsessed with the symbol and purpose of guns.

Of course, these extremists are barely a fraction of gun owners in America. But this very vocal minority is very afraid because what we’re advocating is — in their minds — the ultimate emasculation. Women telling men to tone it down with their guns, showing them real data that proves guns don’t actually make them safer. They feel vulnerable and so they call us names to shame us. They use their arsenals and state-willed unregulated access to guns to threaten us.

In the past few months, you produced a fake commercial for an episode of your show that makes a striking point about gun accessibility and the idiocy of our country’s thought processes on issues disproportionately affecting our generation. After a young woman (you) must go through an array of people to get approval to use birth control, the pharmacist reluctantly gives her the pills. She walks away shocked and disgruntled. Then a boy, maybe 10 years old, comes to the front desk and asks for a gun. The pharmacist slings one across to him and says, “Here you go! And remember, it’s your right!”

You get it.

All of these problems — the disgusting comments and harassment we receive on Twitter and other social media platforms, the obsession of many mass shooters (see the Isla Vista case) with anti-feminism and anti-women ideals, the over-idolization of firearms and fetishization of what they stand for, and the easy access to guns all stem from the same group of core ideologies that we must work to shut down.

We must shut them down because every day in the United States, five women are murdered with a gun. Women in our country are 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than women in other high-income countries. And from 2001 through 2012, 6,410 women were murdered in the United States by an intimate partner using a gun — more than the total number of U.S. troops killed in action during the entirety of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Women of color are particularly disproportionately impacted by gun violence. These are mothers, daughters, sisters, our best friends.

This is the experience of women in a country overshadowed by rampant, targeted gun violence and fear and hatred of women by people who are armed. This is not freedom — at least not for women.

Amy Schumer, I and many other Millennials look up to you so much. You are our generation’s epitome of what it means to be a strong, powerful, self-aware champion for the experiences and truths of being a woman and an American today. I admire your unapologetic, unwavering stature and your ability to laugh at yourself while actually pinning the joke on the audience to address often uncomfortable truths. In fact, I have nearly memorized the very end of the speech you gave at the Ms. Gala award ceremony. You said:

“I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story — I will. I will speak… and I will never apologize to the frightened millions who resent that they never had it in them to do it. I stand here and I am amazing, for you. Not because of you… I am myself. And I am all of you…”

I know deep down that the tweet you sent after the shooting was not all that you’ve got. And we need your voice in this movement. We need your help.

Join your colleagues Sarah Silverman and Kristen Schaal. Join our movement. Write an op-ed. Support an organization. Demand change. Be a voice for our generation and for women — two groups who make up most of the victims of the gun violence in our country.

As you said and as I’ve learned, what truly matters in life is how you decide to write your own story. And in doing so, don’t apologize to the frightened millions who resent that they never had it in them to do it. Instead, show them it can be done.

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90 COMMENTS

    • Sarah Silverfish made a shitty mock commercial about the “need to arm young urban black males” and was solidly spanked by ZoNation.

      Ray

        • I know it’s playing right into Ms. Clements’ hand, but one of the most satisfying scenes in cinema history is the opening of, get this, “The Way of the Gun”, where a totally in-character Sarah Silverman gets her clock cleaned. And since it was done by what I take to be a homosexual character, maybe it was politically correct, to boot.

  1. Interesting. Once I read it I realized; I don’t care. The rights trump any feeling or phony statistics.

  2. Whatever our differences as gun owners may be, we cannot afford to allow firearms ownership to be publicly demonized as anti-womens rights.

    If that happens,the antis won’t need Congress or the White House to ban & confiscate guns. Our mothers, sisters, wives and fiancees will do it for them, because “women’s rights” .

    • “Our mothers, sisters, wives and fiancees will do it for them, because “women’s rights” .”

      Wait until they try to take them from our ladies.

    • I read once a while ago ( before cell phones) that in Chicago the most common weapon used in domestic violence was the handset of a good old Western Electric telephone.

      What will these bleeding heart women do if they are ever successful in this ridiculous campaign against guns and the same number of women are assaulted and killed every year with knives, bats, pool cues, etc.?

      Then it will be too late to realize that the correct option should have been to empower women by enhancing their Second Amendment rights and encouraging their exercise of those rights, not by making them even more vulnerable to larger, stronger, more aggressive bullies than they already are.

      Oh, and by the way, ladies – stay away from stupid people in stupid places doing stupid things, even if you’re married to them or dating them.

      • According to the feminist lib-tards, what you said would be classified as victim blaming. If you can’t tell women “don’t get blackout drunk in a frat house” to avoid being raped, you can’t say what you just did. According to them, personal responsibility is now the responsibility of the state. It doesn’t matter what they do wrong; a “victim” is never responsible for the situation they end up in. This garbage is not about “safety”, it’s about subversion, tyranny, and servitude. Just like the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (North Korea) is not democratic, nor run by the people, nor a republic. Outright lies that aren’t even hidden!

        • “According to them, personal responsibility is now the responsibility of the state. It doesn’t matter what they do wrong; a “victim” is never responsible for the situation they end up in.”

          Well said, Andrew. +1000.

    • Same here, but it took me longer.

      I thought I was missing some hidden point about Amy Shumer and guns – like perhaps Amy once made a pro-gun comment. And therefore, if Amy joined The Statist Gun Grabber Mom’s Against America there would be Unicorns and Rainbows in Hollywood.

      Because Amy Shumer = Famous Person.
      And her movie is trending on Twitter…

      Is that a logical summation of this letter?

  3. I always make the simple point that one’s proximity to a dangerous person is orders of magnitudes worse than proximity to anyone with a gun. If someone can’t understand that, it’s not going to be a rational discussion.

  4. Why do they always attack the gun and not the perpetrators? Guns are the only item that is ever the focus, the blame for all our woes. Not the the violence. “Gun violence” what about “knife violence”Car violence hammer violence”? Or the leading cause gang violence. Maybe if we hadn’t taken God out of everything.

    And yes I’m gonna say it. If parents took more responsibility raising their children, and take mature ratings on video games more seriously. If only some people would just stop having kids for sport and the father’s would stick around to teach them how to be men.

    • In these people’s minds, guns are evil. If the guns weren’t there, the horrific act couldn’t have been possible… mkay?

      • Not really. You don’t REALLY believe these people are THAT stupid, do you?

        No, they know EXACTLY what they are saying and doing. Gun Control is about “control” and the only reason “gun” is part of the discussion is because they know they can twist emotions based on it.

        Gun control, even in crap forms such as this, is part of a larger movement. Getting rid of guns is a step on the path, not the end point. The end point is totalitarianism, and the most evil slave-master form of it at that.

        • There’s plenty of regimes in the 20th century that prove that it’s not the intellectual capability to see the other side… it’s the social unwillingness.

  5. I don’t get their logic.

    If a man hates them enough to kill them, if they had a gun they would have a fighting chance. If you take away all of the guns, then they will surely be beaten or stabbed to death instead.

    “Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal” applies to women too.

  6. “my life’s work”
    Then you need to get a clue AND a life. Apparently you’re are an idiot.

    If you pay ANY attention to twitter – you’re an idiot
    If you believe in “anti-feminism and anti-women ideals” – you’re an idiot
    “activist for safer communities” – you’re an idiot
    “gun violence prevention advocate” – you’re an idiot

    “mother survived” – Really? Did the nutter actually shoot at mom?

    • Doubtful. Likely what happened is her (unnamed) mother was in the school that (according to the media) was attacked by a mass shooter…

      If any of that actually did happen then this woman lived a few moments of her life in ACTUAL fear that something bad will happen, and she took up an anti gun position as a result of emotion driven thought process.

  7. “Gun Control Is a Woman’s Issue” Damn right. One group’s “emasculation” issue is another group’s “right to self-protection” issue.

    If you don’t protect yourselves, who will?

  8. Interesting, I just finished watching a vid on youtube about Kurdish women taking up arms against ISIS. And they are taking up arms because of FEMINISM, of all things. Really great quote in there by one young woman’s father, BTW: “Anyone who is armed has equal rights”.
    BTW 2: Why am I supposed to care what Amy Shumer has to say about anything, anyway?

  9. I long for the day when citizens return to suffering a tragedy within their family.

    Demanding a country to participate in your suffering or creating a foundation to create cash flow is a sordid continuation of intellectual violence upon people.

  10. Gun rights is a VERY important issue for women. Let’s face it, women are physically weaker than men. There is NO other tool on the planet that can put women on equal or superior footing to a man than a firearm and the training that goes with it.

    Stripping this ability from women is criminal in my eyes and should absolutely be treated as such. These people disgust me.

  11. At this point, I can’t take seriously anyone who makes the “you can get a gun easier than you can get X” argument. I’ve yet to hear a version of it that hasn’t been complete bullshit.

  12. Ah yes, all those 10 year old kids getting guns at pharmacies. For free! If we could just verify someone’s age and make them actually PAY for the gun… oh wait, we already do.

    • It’s bad enough the Twit feels she speaks for ALL women but the premise it’s more difficult to get birth control than purchase a gun is nothing less than delusional!
      I graduated HS in 1969, lots of young women were already on “the Pill” at that time. 1971 Roe v Wade
      made abortion legal. Hey cupcake you do not speak for me as a women, you do not speak for any woman, other than yourself. That is part of what was gained by the women’s movement in 60’s – 70’s. Liberation is not a gender thing, it is a human right thing. Now step away from key board & STFU

  13. Ugh! What a phony-ass, buzz-word-laden screed! “Your movie…was brilliant, so you…” who says crap like that? My fine-ass wife would have words with this shill about womens’ rights, such as her right to keep and bear an AK-47 and look good as he’ll doing it, too!
    Us this honestly where the women’s rights movement is heading? Away from independent, free-thinking, capable, honest-to-God-Almighty WOMEN and towards pearl-clutchers gasping, “Where’s my fainting couch?” Disgusting and disappointing.
    Keep your whiny Feminists and SJWs; I’ll take an exciting, real-deal hella-Woman that keeps me on my toes.

  14. The writer’s attempt to impose guilt, shame, or any kind of feeling on Amy Schumer just because some idiot did an idiot thing during a showing of a particular movie merely demonstrates the desperation and emotional, rational and intellectual dishonesty the grabbers have to engage in to get any kind of traction.

    I hope Amy devotes an entire show to mocking the writer.

  15. I’m to the point on this man-hating BS to just stay home and tell my wife she can be the bread winner.

    Of course I’ve grown accustomed to eating and shelter.

  16. Why did you republish this?

    There are plenty of women who understand that a force equalizer is a good thing for segments of the population that statistically tend to be smaller, slower, and physically weaker.

      • Except for the trailers for her movie, I would have no idea who Amy Schumer is. Nor do I want to. Well, to be fair, she has no idea who I am either.

        • Makes the waiting even more unbearable, doesn’t it? I’m just a damned old grump I guess, but I get so bloody annoyed at this celebrity-of-the-moment biz. It’s bad enough that some folks think a “celebrity” has more valuable opinions on things than ordinary people, but when the celebrity is only “celebrated” for a month or two, only to be replaced by the next trendy personality, it just adds insult to–well, insult.

  17. Amy Schumer ia a vulgar person without personal standards. The other person makes no sense to me. Why do these types feel compelled to celebrate bodies that would not attract attention even if they were the only women on a Greek freighter?

  18. Dear Sarah Clements,

    I am deeply saddened by the losses in your life, it is a terrible thing to lose loved ones to the violent acts of criminals.

    I know your open letter wasn’t addressed to me, but since you did post it in ‘open’ format I would like to take a moment to respond anyway….

    STFU.

    Your loses do not make you an expert, your opinions are not in any way superior to anyone else’s by virtue of someone you know being a victim. To be perfectly blunt, you are a naive idiot who is doing nothing more than promoting the creation of more victims. And trying to cage it in terms of women’s rights is just simple sinister.

    Thank you.

    A free citizen of the United States of America.

  19. She’s extremely sexist and like almost every anti 2A advocate, she lies.

    Besides all the sexist stereotypes, she used the term “gun lobby”. I’ve often wondered, if the “gun lobby” has such power then why would they lobby for whoever pays them the most money, because it would most likely be companies involved in banking.

    Such advocates still haven’t learned that they are their own biggest obstacle to any reform.

  20. The author makes a ton of assumptions about Amy Schumer’s thought processes in a desperate attempt to co-opt the famous comedienne’s notoriety into her own painful experience.

  21. Sorry for her loss, but teachers are not protectors. Armed teachers could be, but most liberal progressive teachers simply lack the wherewithal to fight. Many schools have less physical security than the jewelry store at the local mall.

  22. MMMM…Ms. Gala-that says it all. Yeah I want my minute back(I’m great at skimming BS)…I do think the slovenly schumer is moderately funny-but I don’t care…

  23. The photo of this Sara person and her boyfriend/husband….you can be sure she keeps his in a jar by the bed and only lets him use them when he begs enough to satisfy her.

  24. “… and the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

    My mother survived that last one.”

    So did several other people who were nowhere near the shooter! I’m reminded of a Seinfeld episode where George is passed over for an apartment in favor of an Andrea Doria survivor.

  25. I honestly have no idea who Amy Schumer is and should I really care?
    Sarah Clements is the self-described “Daughter of Sandy Hook survivor….so I survived a really bad car crash caused by some moron texting while driving 60 mph and rear ending me without even tapping the brakes; and now I am an expert on auto safety.
    Hey, I am a self described ” Son of an Army Staff Sergeant who survived combat on Luzon with the Japanese Imperial Army” , so I am now an expert on jungle warfare.

    • Pretty much.

      Like all libtards, she’s suffering from a severe case of woeismelookatme and victim-itis.
      Somebody call the waaaambulance.

  26. I’m glad mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer civil rights activist, kept shot guns in her ready to kill the first home invader wearing bed sheets who tried to enter her home or try to burn it down with her in it.

    Some women just don’t want strong independent women around.

  27. “Women are very simply the ultimate moral base in our battles for peace and justice throughout the world.”

    Huh. Thus men should sit down and shut up, be seen and not heard, eh?

    If men denigrate women, it is wrong. But if women denigrate men, it is okay. Got it. Or not.

  28. “Women telling men to tone it down with their guns, showing them real data that proves guns don’t actually make them safer.”

    So we can tell women to “tone it down” with tampons, because we have concrete data that tampons are more dangerous (toxic shock syndrome) than pads, right? In fact not only can we tell women to “tone it down with tampons”, we can even have government pass a law and make it a felony for women to use tampons, right? And with a law prohibiting the use of tampons, armed government agents can use whatever force is necessary, up to and including deadly force, to arrest and imprison women who tampons against the law, correct?

    Or, we can educate women about the risks and benefits of various approaches to feminine hygiene and ensure that they are free to choose as they see fit. Similarly, we can educate men (and women as well) about the risks and benefits of various approaches to personal security (including firearms) and ensure that they are free to choose as they see fit.

    • But you’re using logic. That’s not how we argue anymore. We need to discuss feelings! Oh, sorry, I spelled that wrong. Feewings, itty bitty touchy feewings.

  29. Sarah goes from quoting Amy Schumer basically saying she is her own woman … “You will not determine my story — I will” … to a mere scant few sentences later asking Amy to join them … “Join our movement.”

    i.e. from “Yes, be your own woman!” to “Why aren’t you like us?”

    Sure.

  30. Such feminist anti-gun garbage. Ban guns because men shoot women? Did they forget that we also are physically larger and stronger in all but a few cases? Guns are the great equalizer. Feminists should logically support a device that grants them greater ability for project physical force. But for that to be true, feminists would have to be capable of sound logic in the first place. They claim that in 11 years over 6000 women were killed by an intimate partner using a firearm. I can only imagine the rage that must overtake someone for them to kill someone they once loved. Even if they were without a firearm, the rage remains. Would 6000 women beaten or stabbed to death be better? Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. And to those of you who have said you’re “sorry for her loss”; SHE DIDN’T LOSE ANYTHING! Her mother was a “survivor” just like every other person in the world not in this madman’s path. If I take up their logic, I’ve survived more attempts on my life than days I’ve lived. All these murders and mass shootings and I’m a “survivor”. Sure, I was nowhere nearby or in any danger, but it still counts right?…right?…anyone?….Bueller?….Bueller? These people disgust me. Funny how responsible gun ownership and support of the Constitution separates the patriots from the quislings. I’m glad most of you feel similarly. This website and the comments remind me that I’m not alone in these thoughts, as much as the media would have me believe otherwise. If I were born today, I might actually believe the lies they spin. That’s a big part of the problem… we are all aging. If this insane progression is not somehow stopped, I fear in 50 years time, none of this will even matter. The next generation believes all the lies and soon, they will have the reigns.

  31. I am a woman, and my sweet baby sleeping on my chest will be a woman one day.

    Gun rights are women’s rights. And men’s rights. Guess what, gun rights are human rights.

    I will defend my daughter to my dying breath if need be, and I will also teach her to defend herself. Firearms are one type of tool that I do not shy away from using if necessary to protect her, and I will teach her to use them when she is ready as well. Guns are a wonderful equalizer, so if I ever have to go toe to toe with an attacker 100 lbs pounds heavier and a foot taller than myself, I’m not doomed to failure due to my size.

    An attack on gun rights is an attack on my daughter’s safety. I know that the “statistics” this woman talks about, allegedly proving that guns don’t make us safer, are based on biased and invalid interpretations of data (ignoring the vast majority of defensive gun usages that result in no casualties). In short, Bad Science. As a scientist I would be offended by this Bad Science even if it wasn’t being used to endanger myself and my child. As it is, I am livid.

    I really, really hate it when people try to make gun rights a women vs. men issue. If my child were a boy I would be fighting to protect him and his future rights just as strongly, and my husband fights for our family just as strongly as I do. This woman is entitled to her own opinion (flawed as it may be) but NOT to project her opinion onto me just because I’m also female.

  32. Apparently, the very special snowflakes among the female half of the population are bound and determined to prove the critics of the 19th Amendment correct. Women cannot handle the intellectual contest of political debate.

    We’ve also learned that women on college campuses cannot handle sexual relationships (with or without alcohol present), nor can they even merely discuss or debate these sorts of issues without a speaker or writer issuing “trigger warnings” to prevent mental anguish on the part of female listeners or readers.

    Therefore, I think it best to shelter women from these hardships. We should repeal the 19th Amendment, and in an effort to shield women from unpleasant thoughts and words, we should sequester them in segregated housing and buildings. In order to prevent them from feeling “micro-aggressions” when (or if) they need to step into the outside world, they should be covered from head to toe in a garment that prevents the “visual rape” of said special snowflakes. Of course, they’ll need a chaperone to prevent unwanted advances and “micro-aggressors” from attempting to communicate with them as well.

    Perhaps we can learn something from the Islamic world after all…

  33. My bride of almost 40 years read this article just before she checked the loads and holstered her Ruger LCR. She said “SCREW YOU” picked up her keys and went to the grocery store for her weekly shopping trip.

    • You are lucky to have lived in a time when women had some sense and morality. I’m a bit younger than you and pretty jealous that you’ve found such a catch. Not only is she sensible and strong, but also devoted enough to spend 40 years with you! The women I meet are dependent, weak, gold diggers; and far from loyal. I just had my 30th birthday and hold little hope for finding a woman as admirable as your wife. Feminists don’t need men, well, I don’t need them either. Where did all the sane women go?!?

  34. Every time I hear the term “millennial” used as a generation name, I have to lookup and verify that I am indeed a member of the group (birth year 1986). Everything I read that uses the term and all the generalizations about them seem to reinforce the idea that I was born into the wrong generation.

  35. I get to use my new word for the day: Polypragmaton. I have a feeling there will be lots of opportunities to use it should I choose to sound pedantic. But then that would be proper in addressing the polypragmatoi.

  36. “…an honest, unapologetic celebration of women’s rights to our bodies, decisions, and independence …”

    Bahahahaa right, I watch and listen to a fair amount of standup, Amy Schumer is just a female Larry the Cable Guy or Dane Cook. Basically just tells fart jokes and says “bitch” after every punchline.

    So she makes a movie glorifying women who sleep around and this is revolutionary? Yeah OK

    • According to this link, women are incapable of rape. thelawdictionary.org/rape/. That fits right in with the feminist ideology. When it’s a male perpetrator, it’s wrong. When it’s a woman, well… they can pretty much do anything. At least that’s the environment these women are trying to create. It’s an ideology that’s doomed from the start, but don’t try to tell them that. They won’t listen.

  37. Couldn’t even finish reading this. She’s a sexist piece of sh*t. A big “f*ck you” from all us men who did nothing. Go die in a fire you hate mongering hypocrite.

  38. Clements letter initially misspelled the name of Lafayette shooting victim Mayci Breaux, who was killed along with Jillian Johnson. Schumer responded on Twitter and corrected Clements spelling error.

  39. Wow! The comments are filled with scared children. Oh you are supposed to be men? Lol. Take a look at the advertisements on a site to get a feel for the type of people who will be commenting. That, & a bunch of NRA shills. I’ve got no problem with guns. I think the 2nd amendment is fine. But to refuse to to even have a rational conversation about the issue shows the immaturity of most of these commenters and gun nuts in general. Scared to wake up in the morning scared to go to bed at night. Pretty much just scared to live their life

    • I think the 2nd amendment is fine. But to refuse to to even have a rational conversation about the issue shows the immaturity of most of these commenters and gun nuts in general.

      So, fine: let’s have a conversation. We can start here: name the law that would have prevented any murder, ever.

      Scared to wake up in the morning scared to go to bed at night. Pretty much just scared to live their life

      The psychological projection prevalent among progressives is both obvious and boring.

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