Fight Like a Mother

by Shannon Watts

  In the end, Manchin-Toomey failed by just six votes, fifty-four to forty-six. Four Republicans sided with the majority of Democrats to support the measure; five Democrats opposed it.

  As Vice President Biden dejectedly announced the outcome, I heard yelling from the opposite side of the gallery where many gun violence survivors were sitting. Pat Maisch, the sixty-four-year-old gun violence survivor and badass who had taken down the shooter outside that Safeway in Tucson with her bare hands, was yelling, “Shame on you! Shame on you!”

  Yelling in the Senate gallery is a big no-no. Observers are supposed to speak in hushed tones. Security swooped in and removed Pat from the gallery and sat her in a chair outside the door where they—wait for it—performed a background check to determine whether she was a criminal.

  Meanwhile, in the White House’s Rose Garden, President Obama and Vice President Biden held a somber press conference. “All in all,” President Obama said, “this was a pretty shameful day for Washington.” Gun violence survivors, including family members of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims, wept silently in the background.

  Learning from Defeat

  In the hours and days after the Manchin-Toomey vote, I wondered whether Moms Demand Action would survive this blow. We’d expended a huge amount of energy to pass the amendment. And we had failed. Our best hadn’t been enough. Maybe the pundits were right; maybe there wasn’t enough will to stop the carnage. Maybe the gun lobby was just too powerful. I seriously wondered whether we should acknowledge defeat and disband the fledgling grassroots network we’d started and galvanized.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about what Senator Heitkamp told reporters after the vote. She said the reason she voted against the bill was because she’d gotten so many calls and emails from gun extremists who felt that any new gun laws were an infringement on their Second Amendment rights. Even though polls showed that more Americans supported Manchin-Toomey than opposed it, lawmakers were letting the more vocal minority shape our gun laws.

  After several days of soul searching, I realized that even though Manchin-Toomey had seemed like such a no-brainer, the Congress we’d had the day before the Sandy Hook school shooting was the same Congress we had the day after—one that was beholden to the NRA and its deadly agenda. If we wanted to change the nation’s culture of gun violence, we’d have to change our lawmakers one at a time. And that was going to take many years and several election cycles. In other words, this would be a marathon, not a sprint.

  I also knew that although we’d lost the vote, we’d made some incredible strides. All those marches where we’d shown up wearing our Moms Demand Action T-shirts, all those phone calls and emails we’d made to lawmakers, all of the social media posts that got shared and helped build our following—they all mattered. We had learned so much about how to organize. We hadn’t scored a touchdown, it’s true. But we’d made a lot of first downs.

  Yes, we’re all waiting for a cathartic moment in Congress when lawmakers finally stand up to the gun lobby and close the loopholes that allow dangerously easy access to guns for abusers, criminals, and the mentally ill. And yes, bad bills get passed every month that allow unsafe laws to continue. What the Manchin-Toomey loss showed us so clearly is that Congress isn’t where this work begins — it’s where it ends.

  After that tough loss, we turned our focus to making changes at the state level. Yes, in some ways it’s a bigger task because there are fifty states and thus a lot of fronts. But it’s also more doable to effect change at the state level—something we saw right away.

  As the Manchin-Toomey amendment was working its way to a vote, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland were working to pass sweeping gun reform legislation. After the national bill lost, Moms Demand Action volunteers jumped in to play a huge role in helping those state reforms become law. They made thousands of calls to their elected officials, sent them thousands of emails, and showed up in person for hearings and meetings. After all three gun reform packages became law, the governors of each state publicly thanked Moms Demand Action for helping them pass these lifesaving bills, providing us with significant political capital—and more momentum to keep fighting.

  The Upside of Losing

  Thinking about all these small-yet-important gains forced me to change the way I thought about winning and losing. I had always known that changing America’s gun laws wouldn’t happen overnight, but up until that point I hadn’t completely understood that we needed to dig in for the grueling, years-long process of incremental progress. In any kind of advocacy, you’re going to encounter losses and setbacks. In order to have the mental wherewithal, we were going to have to redefine success and accept that while we couldn’t always win, we could make every loss count by losing forward.

  To the untrained eye, losing forward can look a lot like plain old losing—especially when the good gun bills we support don’t pass. But there’s a flip side to protecting more Americans from gun violence, and that is working to make sure bad gun bills don’t get the votes to become law. And it turns out, we’re really good at that.

  In fact, we have a 90 percent track record of killing bad NRA-supported bills every single year—bills that would allow guns in elementary schools or on college campuses, would legalize permitless carry, or would make “stand your ground” (a questionable premise that essentially makes it okay to shoot first and ask questions later in any situation where you perceive a threat) a valid legal defense. Before Moms Demand Action came along, no one was providing any opposition to these bills; now we do that.

  Of course, we do still lose. Some of those bad bills do become law. No matter what cause you’re championing—and especially when your opponent has an annual budget of hundreds of millions of dollars—losing is a fact of life. What Moms Demand Action volunteers have learned, though, is that losing can help chapters grow, result in stronger relationships with lawmakers, and even change hearts and minds. When we inevitably lose, we feel the disappointment, but not for long; we’re too busy focusing on the gains our efforts created, even if they didn’t have the exact results we were aiming for. Besides, if we gave up when we lost those battles, we’d be letting the NRA and gun lobbies win the war, and we’ve come too far to let that happen.

  As the husband of one of our Virginia volunteers once said to me, “Sometimes entire football games are won by field goals—not everything has to be a touchdown.”

  Be Dedicated to the Ends, but Flexible About the Means

  In any advocacy work, doors will slam in your face—literally and figuratively. When you commit to losing forward, you know the door is just one way to get inside—you can always go through windows, too, as I said in Chapter 1. The power of losing forward comes from simply refusing to give up. While you still need goals you’re working toward—ours are demanding action from state and federal legislators, companies, and educational institutions to establish commonsense gun reforms—losing forward helps you stay flexible about how to reach those goals. Challenge yourself to find a new way in any time you encounter a closed door. And really, does it matter what your path looks like as long as it gets you where you intend to go?

  Flexibility in Action

  The campaign by the Texas Moms Demand Action chapter to simplify “no guns” signage in Texas is a great demonstration of the power of the willingness to be flexible about your means.

  Shortly after the Manchin-Toomey vote, one of our Texas volunteers, Norri Leder, stumbled upon a website called texas3006.com. This site, which still exists as I write this, lists thousands of Texas businesses and nonprofits that prohibit guns on their premises. Norri noticed a column that she didn’t understand at first; it had the header “Valid” and listed either “yes” or “no” for each establishment. She soon figured out that the “yes” or “no” indicated whether the signage the business posted complied with state law. The information was listed because gun extremists were using it to determine whether or not they could legally flout company policy. If a business’s si
gnage didn’t follow the letter of the law, these website users would carry their guns into the business anyway. When Norri saw the comments from folks saying things like “I carry into the Chuck E. Cheese on so-and-so street because the sign is up in English and not in Spanish,” she got that hit of outrage that told her she had to try to change it.

  Norri began to dig and found that in the mid-1990s, shortly after concealed carry was legalized by the Texas legislature, a rash of businesses began posting “no guns” signs. In response, the NRA and Texas State Rifle Association used their influence to get a law passed through the state legislature that they dubbed the “big ugly sign law.” This law required businesses to post large signs that contained extensive boilerplate language in a specific font size in both English and Spanish. Because it was a nonstandard size, the mandated sign required professional printing, making it an inconvenient and expensive eyesore.

  The best part for the gun lobby? Most businesses knew nothing about the sign law, especially by the time Norri found out about it, many years after its passage. As this website proved, hundreds of businesses were posting signs they thought were sufficient to prohibit guns on their premises when technically, they weren’t.

  Norri began calling every business with a “no” in the “Valid” column to ask whether their signage was compliant. She and the Texas Moms Demand Action chapter also persuaded multiple business owners to send letters to lawmakers asking for simplified signage. Using social media and direct outreach, they eventually persuaded influential state groups such as the Texas Association of Business and the Texas Restaurant Association to support legislation to change the signage requirements.

  Business-friendly and gun-sense-friendly lawmakers put a bill forward to change the signage requirements, and Norri was asked to testify. During her testimony, she showed just how big and unsightly the mandated signs were by pulling out one of them, and she gave lawmakers a list of businesses in their districts that had been targeted on texas3006.com.

  Unfortunately, the simplified signage bill didn’t pass. We could have chalked that up as another defeat, but our dedication to losing forward motivated us to pivot our attention to the businesses themselves. Volunteers called and visited businesses all over the state to let them know about the signage requirements and to offer them professionally designed and downloadable versions of the sign, so that all a business owner had to do was email it to a printer and then hang up the finished product.

  Texas volunteers also created an online tool to track businesses that ultimately put up proper signage to prohibit the concealed and/or open carry of firearms in their establishments. In the end, they persuaded more than four hundred businesses to post the ugly (but legal) signs—including grocery stores, restaurant chains, medical facilities, day-care centers, and houses of worship.

  Simplified signage bills were advanced again in the 2017 legislative session. Again they didn’t pass, but the issue is still very much alive in the legislature and serves as a powerful reminder that while Texas Republican lawmakers fear the gun lobby, they also fear the business community. And thanks to Norri’s efforts, many, many more businesses listed on the texas3006.com website have a “yes” in the “Valid” column. Even though the legislation hasn’t yet passed, we still achieved our end goal—more Texas businesses legally prohibiting open carry.

  The Gift of Trying Even When There’s No Hope of Winning

  Some battles you just know you’re not going to win. It’s important to fight them anyway, because when you lose forward, you make gains that help make you stronger for the next fight. That’s what happened in 2017, when a small team of Arkansas moms decided to spearhead a Moms Demand Action campaign to defeat a “guns-on-campus” bill. Arkansas is a red state, so the team suspected that no matter how effective they were, their efforts were likely to result in a loss—after all, the NRA was throwing everything it had at allowing guns on college campuses. But they were determined to be a part of the resistance; doing nothing simply wasn’t an option.

  The Arkansas chapter leaders decided to go down swinging. What made the road ahead even more challenging was that the Arkansas chapter had struggled to grow its membership. At that time, it was one of the smallest in the nation, with only twenty-eight volunteers. They couldn’t send mass emails or texts to rally the troops, because there weren’t really any troops to speak of. But although those twenty-eight volunteers weren’t exactly a groundswell, they were a good start.

  Eve Jorgensen, a Little Rock mother of two and full-time engineer, started posting frequently on social media to spread the word about the guns-on-campus bill and its dangerous consequences. She also worked with a small group of other Arkansas volunteers to develop calling scripts. Then she created new social media campaigns to urge Arkansans to get involved and call their legislators.

  “I was shocked by the power of social media,” Eve said. “I’d put up a message about a last-minute hearing on the bill, and people would see it and actually show up at the statehouse.”

  The press noticed, too. Austin Bailey, chapter leader at the time, gave multiple interviews on air and in print to get the word out about the fight happening at the Capitol. One article referred to the Arkansas Moms Demand Action volunteers as “scarlet-shirted mothers” who were “permanent fixtures” at the statehouse. That media coverage helped draw new volunteers to the chapter. When bigger red-shirted crowds started turning out at events, the media reported on the increase, which fueled more people to join.

  This is one reason why it’s important to wage a battle you know you can’t win: to increase your organization’s visibility and public support. Simply by showing up and refusing to give up, Moms Demand Action volunteers showed Arkansans that it was possible to galvanize around a polarizing issue in a red state.

  After the bill to allow guns on campus passed the legislature, but before it was signed into law by Governor Asa Hutchinson, Moms Demand Action volunteers met with him two times in hopes of persuading him to veto it. Each time, they brought along key campus stakeholders, members of law enforcement, and constituents to share their reasons why guns on campus was a dangerous idea. Unfortunately, these meetings didn’t have their intended result, either. Days later, with the NRA’s chief lobbyist at his side, Governor Hutchinson announced he would sign the bill that allowed college students and faculty to carry hidden loaded guns to class, into bars, and inside campus stadiums and dorms.

  Although the unpopular bill passed, playing defense against it meant that the legislature was too occupied by the fight to move forward on other bad gun bills—a true victory in a red state. And the Arkansas Moms Demand Action chapter got a much-needed kick start—as of this writing, they have nearly two thousand volunteers and growing—and expanded to include local groups in three new cities. They also just helped elect two Arkansas Moms Demand Action volunteers to the statehouse—one of whom unseated the lawmaker who was responsible for pushing the guns-on-campus bill. We may have lost that battle, but we ended up a lot better equipped to fight the next one.

  If you think there’s no chance in hell you can win something, you might be tempted to not even try. After all, why pick a fight when you’re pretty sure you’re going to get beat up? But the biggest loss is not trying at all, because it prevents you from picking up crucial gains along the way that help create momentum—whether that’s new members, more visibility, an opening to change a conversation, or a social media moment that puts you on the map. Sometimes the biggest successes come not from outright triumph, but from refusing to go down quietly.

  Use Your Losses to Fuel Your Motivation

  Some losses feel more personal than others. Although these can be some of the most devastating challenges to overcome, they can also provide the fodder you need to keep going. In these instances, losing forward helps you make sense of your loss and channel those emotions into action. I felt hopeless after Manchin-Toomey failed. It seemed like an overwhelming, devastating defeat, but that was also the moment that I k
new we needed to become so big and so powerful that lawmakers like Senator Heitkamp couldn’t ignore us again. The loss was a catalyst for our growth.

  But as much of a gut punch losing Manchin-Toomey was, the sadness I felt was nothing compared to Lucy McBath’s.

  Lucy’s seventeen-year-old son, Jordan Davis, who was black, was shot and killed in 2012 outside a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida, by a white man who was angry that Jordan and his friends were playing loud music in their car.

  Although he was later found guilty, Jordan’s killer claimed Florida’s stand-your-ground law as self-defense. This NRA-supported bill was signed into law by Governor Jeb Bush in 2005, making it the nation’s first law of its kind. Stand your ground emboldens people to shoot to kill, even when they can safely resolve a conflict by other means. And data have shown that such laws result in a significant increase in gun homicides, particularly among African Americans.1 (The law was also used to defend the Florida man who shot and killed seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. As the black teen headed home from a convenience store, he was pursued, shot, and killed by a man who claimed he felt threatened. Because of stand your ground, Trayvon’s killer was exonerated, sparking national outrage.)

  Lucy was living in Georgia when her son was killed. (Jordan was visiting his dad in Florida while Lucy received treatment for breast cancer in Atlanta.) Despite her unbearable sadness, Lucy—whose father had been president of the Illinois chapter of the NAACP—instinctively turned her grief into activism for stronger gun laws. She became a national spokeswoman for Moms Demand Action in 2013. As part of her work, she has met with lawmakers, has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, has spoken at the White House, and was one of seven members of Mothers of the Movement who spoke in support of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in 2016.