A decade ago, after the Sandy Hook shooting, Shannon Watts could take no more. She founded Moms Demand Action, an anti-gun violence group. Watts joins OnPointRadio to discuss why she's proud of 'living rent free in the NRA's head.'
MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: On December 14th, 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and murdered 26 people. 20 of the victims were six-and seven-year-old children. As the news settled over the nation, President Barack Obama gave a statement from the White House briefing room.
And yet, amid this gruesome national stasis, Shannon Watts managed to found what since become one of the largest anti-gun violence advocacy groups in the nation. Moms Demand Action has chapters in every U.S. state, more than 10 million supporters, and has recently endorsed and supported successful political candidates at the state, local and national level.
CHAKRABARTI: And so the thing that you did that same day of December 14th, or very soon thereafter, is you took to Facebook. What did you post? WATTS: Oh, I mean, it went viral immediately. And I think so many women had the same idea that day, which was that it was time to get off the sidelines, that we needed to fight on this issue, that we needed to organize around this issue. And, you know, if you know anything about type-A women, you know that they were direct messaging me and they had found my phone number.
... Just four months after Sandy Hook, where there was a Senate amendment of the Manchin-Toomey amendment, which would have required background checks on all commercial sales of guns. It got 54 votes in the Senate, but because it needed 60 to move forward, it just failed. So, I mean, that was one track of how Americans were dealing with gun violence in this country.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, we're closing in on our first break here in this conversation. Shannon, I wonder if you could quickly tell me, though. It's been a decade now. And yet, even though with all the work that groups like Moms Demand Action has done. I read that stat at the top of the show that more children die by guns in this country now than in motor vehicle accidents.
WATTS: That was pretty immediate. I mean, right away, and I have been a full-time volunteer for a decade, I realized that this was going to be like drinking from a fire hose for years, because when I got involved, I really knew little to nothing about organizing, about gun violence, about the legislative process. You know, I had had a career in communications, and then I was a stay-at-home mom for about five years.
WATTS: Well, we really work on this issue in three ways. We work on it legislatively, as we've been discussing, passing good gun laws, stopping bad bills like Stand your Ground and arming teachers, forcing guns onto college campuses. We have a 90% track record of stopping the NRA's agenda every year for the last seven years.
WATTS: Well, because there is this divide. And look, I don't believe gun safety is partisan. The vast majority of Americans, including Republicans and gun owners, support stronger gun laws like a background check on every gun sale, like requiring safety training, like keeping guns away from domestic abusers. It is only polarizing among essentially gun extremists.
You know, you really can't argue with the data that exists that shows stronger gun laws save lives. And so that is why we work on this electorally, legislative, culturally, because that is how you move the needle and get people to understand the rhetoric of the gun lobby is actually costing Americans lives. It's not making us safer. If more guns and fewer gun laws made us safer, we'd be the safest country in the world with 400 million guns and too few gun laws.
CHAKRABARTI: In 2019 you wrote a book titled"Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World." And there are a number of really fascinating stories in the book, Shannon. And I was wondering if you could tell us one of them. It happens a bit early on, about when you really first realized what the group and you in particular could potentially be capable of.
CHAKRABARTI: You're right, there's common ground about gun safety. There is a perhaps a sort of percentagewise small but extremely vocal and well-funded gun lobby. And so it seems that even with groups such as Moms Demand Action, building more grassroots voices, getting people to express their opinion directly to lawmakers, ultimately, we know those same groups, those same Americans run up against essentially a gun lobby that has, what, a 40-year head start on you.
We've raised the age to buy a long gun in Rhode Island and New York and Delaware. And on top of that, we've unlocked hundreds of millions of dollars for community violence intervention programs. So, you know, we have absolutely made sure that there was a seismic shift in American politics, and that only was possible by organizing.
CHAKRABARTI: We'll have to see if he follows through here. Now, you know, I keep talking about common ground when it comes to opinions about gun safety, but I haven't really offered evidence of that. But you, through your work with Moms Demand Action, I think you've had examples of finding that common ground.
WATTS: I think there's something to be said for naivete, because when I started Moms Demand Action, I did not realize that I would get threatened both online and in real life, that there would be people who wanted to kill me and my kids, who would make threats of sexual violence to me and to my daughters. I immediately started receiving threatening calls and texts, letters to my home, people driving by my home.
WATTS: When I started Moms Demand Action, I was a white suburban mom living in a bubble, and I got off the sidelines because I felt my kids weren't safe in their schools. You know, shame on me for not paying attention to what was happening. You know, the fact that gun violence in schools, mass shootings, school shootings, that's about 1% of the gun violence in this country. It's really the everyday gun violence, whether it's gun homicides, domestic violence, suicide.
WATTS: Well, in addition to being the only developed nation with a 25 times higher gun homicide rate than any peer nation, we're also the only country with a gun lobby. And that gun lobby profits by selling fear, by making people so afraid that they need to have guns to protect themselves. Everyone in this country has a right. If you're not a criminal, to have a gun because of the Second Amendment. And we are not opposed to that.
WATTS: I mean, it's a complicated question. And Senator Chris Murphy actually wrote a very interesting book about the history of violence in America. But in terms of the gun lobby, you know, the NRA switched from being this hunting organization to being a gun lobbying organization in the late seventies. And it is around that time when guns started to proliferate, when gun violence became more normalized.
CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, true. And at the same time, I continue to see that tension is the tension that you and the group has have been pushing against for a decade now. Because, you know, simultaneously we have, for example, you know, a Supreme Court. Right. Which in recent rulings has shown its willingness to even go so far as to roll back gun safety laws that some states pass.
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