How One Mom Has Taken Gun Safety Into Her Own Hands

This article was originally published on Oct. 16, 2018.

When a shooter killed 26 students and faculty at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Shannon Watts decided enough was enough. “I felt like I had to do something or I would be culpable the next time,” the former corporate executive and mom of five says. Watts launched a Facebook page that became Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. The organization quickly grew into the grassroots arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to reform. Combined, the two groups now mobilize more than 5 million volunteers (at press time) with chapters in all 50 states.

Despite that level of participation, Watts admits that working in the violence-prevention space can be very trying. “The hardest part of being a gun violence prevention activist is [when] I wake up and look at my phone and realize I’ve been texted because in the middle of the night there has been a horrific mass shooting,” Watts explains. “I know I’m going to spend the next week or even months working on a tragedy that was both preventable and senseless.”

Moms Demand Action has successfully advocated for bills that prohibit private gun sales without background checks in eight states, and bills that disarm domestic abusers in 28 states (at press time).

“Every country is home to toxic masculinity. But only America makes it really easy to access an arsenal and ammunition,” Watts says. “And that is why this country has such a gun violence crisis.”

Watts, 47, is now focused on the midterm elections, and is working to garner votes for pro-gun safety candidates. “Americans are fed up with offers of thoughts and prayers from lawmakers without taking action,” she says. “These are acts of cowardice by people we’ve elected to protect us."

To hear more about the beginning of Moms Demand Action, plus Watts’s plans for a safer future, read on.

RELATED: Why We Need Gun Control Now, According to a Governor Who Is Making It Happen

Social-media momentum Moms Demand Action uses Facebook and Twitter to coordinate with followers and “pull the lever of spending power,” pushing major companies to enact their own gun-safety policies. “We were able to get Chipotle to prohibit open carry in three days by using the hashtag #burritosnotbullets.”

Overcoming obstacles Immediately after she launched the organization, Watts says, gun extremists started sending death and sexual-violence threats against her and her daughters. “I have to travel with security and use an alias simply because I think every gun sale in this country should require a background check.”

RELATED: I’m a Former NRA Supporter. Now I Want to Ban Assault Weapons

Bearing arms The group supports the Second Amendment. In fact, many of its volunteers are gun owners (Watts’s children’s father even owns rifles). “The responsibilities that go along with gun rights need to be restored,” she says. Watts believes more restrictive gun legislation will help reduce America’s gun-homicide rate, which, according to Everytown research, is 25 times higher than the average of any other high-income country. “I don’t think parents in other high-income countries worry about gun safety like American parents do.”

Gun sense “It’s so important we remember that 96 Americans are shot and killed every single day,” Watts says. This is why her group is pressing for stronger gun-safety bills and policies at both the local and national levels. “I feel like we’ve saved so many lives through the work we’ve done already,” Watts says. “And I know it is just a matter of time until we get a president and Congress in place who will do the right thing.”