Mothers stand up against gun violence

In December 2012, Shannon Watts, a mother of five who had previously worked in corporate communications, was at her home in Indiana folding laundry when she saw the news about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 20 first-graders and six adults. Outraged and heartbroken, she looked for a group like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but for gun violence. She didn’t find one, so she started her own Facebook page.

Less than seven years later, Moms Demand Action, the group of nearly six million members that came out of that page, was praised on the crowded stage of the first Democratic debate by candidate Julián Castro, who said it had “risen up across the United States and inspired so many people.” 

Watts’ new book, Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World, explains how she got involved in the fight for gun safety and offers tips for others to make a difference. In one chapter she writes about “losing forward.” One of the major losses she cites is the 2013 Manchin-Toomey bill to close background-check loopholes at gun shows and online. In spite of political momentum for it to pass after Sandy Hook, the bill, proposed by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, failed, which Watts calls crushing. But something a North Dakota senator said inspired her to take something from the loss.

“Heidi Heitkamp voted against it and she’s a Democrat and a mother, and she said she’d heard more from the other side,” Watts said. “We decided right then to never to let that happen again.”

After that loss, the group, which had been holding rallies and marches, shifted its focus to changing laws at a state level, and since then, Moms Demand Action has helped pass gun-safety laws in 20 states — nine of those with a Republican governor. The group also has about a 90 percent success rate in defeating bills proposed by the National Rifle Association. Beating back bad bills may seem less splashy than passing legislation, but it’s important, Watts says. They’ve also helped to get some businesses, such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Panera, and Starbucks, to ban guns in their stores. Starbucks was one of the biggest wins for her, Watts says. After she saw on the news that the coffee chain was going to prohibit smoking within 25 feet of its stores, she called the corporate office to ask them if they were still going to allow open carry, meaning having a gun in plain view. When the company told her yes, she organized #SkipStarbucksSaturday, a social media campaign Watts called a “momcott.” After doing this for a few months, Watts got a message on Facebook at 1 a.m. telling her they’d won and Starbucks was going to reverse its position. She put out a press release a couple hours later, before Starbucks released one, so Moms Demand got credit for the shift.

“It was right after the Manchin-Toomey loss and only about six months after we started,” she said. “It made us aware of our power. We are winning. It’s just that change doesn’t happen overnight.”

Watts’ initial Facebook post began: “This site is dedicated to action on gun control — not just dialogue about anti-gun violence.” Watts got an outpouring of responses, many of them from mothers like her committed to keeping their families safe.

“I had a strong sense that moms are the yin to the NRA’s yang,” Watts said. “So many people said, ‘I want to do this where I live.’ A lot of us are the same age range and had seen how transformative Mothers Against Drunk Driving was.”

Volunteers organized Facebook pages in their own states, and Watts did her research. She read about gun violence. She cold-called experts. Having had no experience organizing, she talked to everyone she could think of about how to be effective and get legislation passed. And while the organization now has a staff of about 100, Watts, who often works long days of traveling, speaking, making phone calls, and contacting legislators, is a volunteer herself. She is fortunate to be able to do it, she says, and she points out the contrast to Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the NRA, who gets a salary of over a million dollars a year. 

Another decision Watts made immediately was to keep women at the forefront of the organization.

“So often what you see in grassroots movements is women doing the menial labor — setting up chairs and making snacks — while men set the strategy and take the spotlight,” Watts said. “We wanted women to be doing all of it. If you do the unglamorous work, you should get the credit too.”

Watts is a big believer in data, which she says is necessary to combat whatever misinformation people have about guns, and she reiterates throughout the book that the group is not anti-gun, but anti gun violence. Watts also writes that not every lawmaker can be replaced, so the group needs to work with the ones they have. That data — along with personal stories — can help change people’s minds, she says, citing a bill that passed in Rhode Island in 2017 after a three-year fight, closing loopholes that allowed domestic abusers to have guns. Volunteers showing up and telling of their own experiences with abusers and stalkers made a big difference, Watts said, along with citing research indicating that the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five times more likely a woman will die.

Moms Demand Action and Watts have also focused on getting women elected to office. In the 2018 election, 40 Moms Demand Action volunteers ran for office from city council to statehouse to Congress, and 17 of them won. One of the biggest victories was that of Lucy McBath, a Moms Demand member whose 17-year-old African American son, Jordan Davis, had been shot and killed by a white man who said he was playing his music in his car too loudly. McBath was elected to Congress from Georgia in a seat that had been held by a Republican for 30 years.

McBath, a spokesperson for Moms Demand Action, a few years ago told Watts something she tried to take to heart — that the group wasn’t diverse enough. McBath said that in her volunteer work as a spokesperson, her audiences were groups that were mainly white, and she wanted that to change. Watts thanks McBath in the book for speaking up. She says the group is working to be more inclusive and since 2017, more than 40 percent of the hires are nonwhite.

Watts encourages women to not be afraid of their outrage. She writes in Fight Like a Mother, “Allowing yourself to feel your righteous anger about the state of the country your kids are growing up in — no matter what cause may be fueling your passion — makes you more powerful, not less.” In a blurb for the book, Soraya Chemaly, the author of Rage Becomes Her, says: “The world needs angry women right now. It’s time we embrace the passion and action behind saying enough is enough.” With Fight Like a Mother, Watts lays out practical ways to do that.