Fight Like a Mother

by Shannon Watts

  While what Teresa calls “the unceasing drumbeat of the women in red shirts showing up day in and day out” and the bravery of so many women sharing their harrowing stories of domestic abuse were both major factors in that victory, I fully believe that it was the data that ultimately began to sway the speaker’s mind and pushed the bill to a vote. Just as you should never underestimate the power of a group of passionate women, you should also never neglect to know what the numbers are and when to wield them. After all, any argument is just an opinion until you have the research and data to back it up. Once you have reliable numbers, that opinion transforms into fact.

  How We Use Data to Set Our Priorities

  At Moms Demand Action, we have passion in spades—I know you have it too, or you wouldn’t be wading into a long chapter about the power of numbers! But passion can quickly dissipate when you’re dealing with a problem that has more contributing factors than an octopus has legs. Just when you think you’ve made progress on one leg, another starts waving around, diverting your attention and scattering your efforts. Data help you see the whole octopus so you can decide which one or two (or, in our case, three) legs you want to prioritize.

  Moms Demand Action bases its policy platform on data-driven research that focuses on one specific outcome: what will save the most lives. On the basis of the available evidence, we know three policies that have proved to be extremely effective at reducing gun deaths: closing loopholes in the background check system, keeping guns out of the hands of known domestic abusers, and passing red flag laws (which allow for the temporary removal of guns from individuals who have shown patterns of violence). These policies are effective, and they enjoy bipartisan support, which is why we’ve made them our top policy priorities.

  Certainly, other policies are important to our volunteers, including restrictions on assault weapons. Moms Demand Action supports limitations on assault weapons to restrict access to firearms like the ones used in the Parkland, Las Vegas, and Pulse shootings, as well as most of the deadliest mass shootings in recent history. We’ve been proud to stand alongside local gun safety advocates who’ve helped pass commonsense restrictions on assault weapons in places like Boulder, Colorado, after the Parkland shooting and Washington State in the 2018 midterms. But while assault-style weapons certainly put the “mass” in mass shooting, the data show that rifles are responsible for only about 3 percent of gun-related homicides; most firearms deaths and injuries are caused by handguns. That’s why we keep our focus on our top priorities; if we spread ourselves too thin, our focus and our progress on the biggest sources of lost lives will be diluted. In advocacy, just as in parenting, you have to pick your battles.

  It’s not just about figuring out what to prioritize though. Being armed with data helps in so many ways; research is like the Swiss Army knife of activism:

  It helps sway lawmakers’ minds. When you can point to numbers from verifiable sources (more on how to determine whether your data are credible here), you present a much more compelling case. Numbers offer lawmakers protection—if they can point to a statistic, they can explain their votes to someone who may not be happy with their decision. The reports we’ve put together on domestic violence, for example, have helped turn lawmakers from stallers into supporters (Speaker Mattiello is a case in point, but he’s by no means the only one).

  It inspires volunteers. When you know that what you’re working on will save lives or change the culture—and you can see demonstrable proof of that power in the numbers—you will be motivated to keep doing the heavy lifting of organizing and advocating. Numbers give you inspiration; they also give you gratification when you see them change over time.

  It gives you credibility. Let’s face it: as women, we’re often dismissed as being too emotional or even hysterical. Knowing the facts makes you more credible, whether you’re talking with a relative at the Thanksgiving table or hashing it out with someone on social media. The facts take ammunition away from your detractors and can provide a counterbalance to narratives that may or may not be wholly accurate.

  Finding the Facts on Gun Violence—It’s Complicated

  When it comes to gun violence, it can be challenging to find reliable data. This is thanks in large part to the efforts of NRA lobbyists, who worked in tandem with members of Congress beholden to them to essentially muzzle the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—the arm of the government that once funded research on the prevalence and impact of gun violence in the United States.

  This push began shortly after a CDC-funded study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1993. In it, researchers showed that instead of protecting you, having a gun at home made you more vulnerable to homicide2—a blow to the whole “guns make people safer” messaging of the NRA. And so the NRA and its minions went all out to shut down any more research that would likely be equally damning.

  With the NRA’s advocacy, the US House of Representatives passed an amendment to the federal budget in 1996 that essentially gutted the CDC’s ability to research gun violence. The amendment removed $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget—precisely the amount it had previously spent on gun violence research3—and contained the caveat that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”4

  Even though these efforts targeted only the federal government, they made gun violence a third rail for academic researchers too. Nobody wanted to touch it. Nobody, that is, except John R. Lott Jr., an economist and a prolific—if flawed—researcher who is the go-to guy when gun advocates want to bolster their argument that guns make people safer. Lott first came on the scene in 1997 when he was a research fellow at the University of Chicago. That year, he co-wrote a study in which he stated “concealed handguns are the most cost-effective method of reducing crime thus far analyzed by economists”5—a premise he expanded upon at length in his 1998 book More Guns, Less Crime. That factoid—which has now been thoroughly debunked by multiple other studies6—lodged in the brains of lawmakers. They cited it in their quest to pass looser gun laws, and Lott even testified in favor of concealed carry laws before at least five state legislatures.

  As Lott became more heralded, other researchers—from institutes as storied as Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and the National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences—sought to verify his claims, and couldn’t. It seems Lott overlooked a lot of data and didn’t take into consideration that crime in the 1980s and 1990s spiked because of the crack epidemic, not because of laws that prohibited concealed carry.7

  Guns aren’t the only topic where Lott has released selectively sourced data that conservative politicians have taken and run with—he’s also a climate change denier and has published erroneous data that suggest that undocumented immigrants and Dreamers are more likely to be convicted of serious crimes and that legal abortion leads to higher crime rates.8

  Even though Lott’s gun data have been discredited, they are still in circulation and are cited by lawmakers and lobbyists so frequently that the data refuse to die. (It doesn’t hurt that Lott is a frequent guest on television news outlets.) And that’s just one more reason to know your numbers—you need to be able to disprove those who will attempt to manipulate the data in order to further their own objectives.

  At Moms Demand Action, we are incredibly lucky to have Everytown for Gun Safety as our primary research arm—after all, Michael Bloomberg built his fortune by gathering, analyzing, and sharing data on his Bloomberg terminals. His mantra, whether he was running the Bloomberg company or serving as the mayor of New York City, has always been, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”—a man after my own heart!

  Since he was mayor of New York City (from 2002 to 2013), Michael has devoted resources to researching gun violence—both by hiring staff for his administration who analyze reports from police, the FBI, and other crime-prevention organizations, and by dona
ting money to academic institutions (such as the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) that then provide a safe haven for academics to conduct their own research.

  One of those staff members is a hero to me: John Feinblatt was Bloomberg’s policy director and is now president of Everytown. John was instrumental in getting marriage equality passed in New York—a campaign we’ve used as a template for our gun safety strategy—and he’s been an amazing general for our grassroots army.

  Under John’s direction, Everytown compiles incredible amounts of data and creates clear, compelling reports on a variety of particular aspects of gun violence—the efficacy of background checks, for example, or the relationship between gun violence and women—and publishes them at the website everytownresearch.org. Any time you want to have the latest reliable facts on gun violence on hand, make this website your first stop. Our volunteers certainly do.

  How to Know Which Data to Trust

  As important as data are, numbers and statistics still can be slippery. As John R. Lott Jr. demonstrates, they can be manipulated to tell many stories. But he’s certainly not the only one who does this. There is even a well-known scientific principle—known as confirmation bias—that asserts that humans have a tendency to look for evidence that supports or proves what they already suspect to be true.

  And it’s easier than ever to read something on social media and click a button to share it with your network—only to find out later that it was misleading or even downright untrue.

  So how can you tell which information is trustworthy and which information isn’t?

  From the tireless and incredibly smart folks who work in the Everytown research department, I’ve learned to ask the following questions about any data. I hope they will help you find the numbers you can put stock in and use to guide your actions.

  Where do the researchers work? In general, it’s a good sign when the authors of a study are affiliated with academic institutions that have a track record of conducting credible science (although this isn’t a guarantee of objectivity—see the “Who funded the research?” bullet for more). If the researchers work at a think tank, does it have a specific political point of view? A key word to look for when researching a nonprofit organization where a researcher works is “nonpartisan,” which generally indicates that the group is trying to be as objective as possible and not put forth a specific, politically determined agenda.

  Where are the data published? In a peer-reviewed publication, where other experts in the field read the study and challenge any conclusions they find questionable before it is published? Or on an organization’s or individual’s own website? Generally, the more objective eyes that have reviewed the findings before they are published, the better.

  Who funded the research? As helpful as it can be to see which academic institutions are involved in the study, it’s no guarantee that this means the research is objective. You want to know, for example, whether research on the safety of a pesticide is being funded by the company that manufactures that pesticide (as was the case with Monsanto and esteemed horticultural academics at the University of Florida), or whether a study that finds that exercise is a more effective weight-loss tool than cutting calories was funded by a soda manufacturer (as Coca-Cola was found to do in 2015).9 When money is involved, motives can get convoluted, and results can get tainted. If someone shares a study with you, do a little digging to see whether you can find who paid for the study. It could be as simple as looking for the phrase “This research was funded by ____.”

  How is the subject defined? In order for a number to be meaningful, you need to know how the researchers defined the question they were seeking to answer. For example, to an economist, the definition of “the economy” is generally “gross domestic product.” A layperson, on the other hand, thinks of “the economy” as “jobs and wages”—two totally different things. So if an article or a politician says, “The economy has never been stronger,” you have to determine how “the economy” is defined in order to be able to compare today’s “economy” to the same “economy” from a year ago.

  Likewise, to some people, a “school shooting” means any firing of a gun that happens on school grounds. To others, it means only an incident like Sandy Hook or Parkland, where a shooter makes a targeted attack on students. Understanding the definition of the subject that’s being quantified is crucial to being able to understand and trust data.

  Dispelling the Biggest Myths About Gun Violence with Data

  One important way we can help change America’s deadly gun culture is by pulling back the curtain on the common misperceptions about guns, gun violence, and gun safety laws in this country. What follows are the most pervasive myths swirling around in people’s minds and on their social media feeds, as well as the numbers that dispel the myths. May these help you start having conversations with friends, family members, neighbors, and legislators on both sides of the issue.

  MYTH: More Guns Mean Less Crime

  Fact: There are no two ways about it: the United States is experiencing a gun violence crisis, and it is happening despite the fact that 393 million guns are in circulation among American civilians.10 If more guns and fewer gun laws made us safer, we would be the safest country in the world. But we aren’t—not by a long shot! (Pardon the pun.) According to a 2016 study published in The American Journal of Medicine, our gun homicide rate is 25.2 times higher than that in other high-income countries; for fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, that rate is 49 times higher.11

  We’re not just killing each other with guns more than in other countries; we’re also killing ourselves: our gun-related suicide rate is eight times higher than that in other high-income countries.

  If you really want to get depressed, outraged, and, I hope, engaged, you should also know that the overall death rate for women in the United States from firearms is 90 percent higher than that in other high-income countries; for infants to children aged fourteen, it’s 91 percent higher, and for youth aged fifteen to twenty-four, it’s 92 percent higher. All in all, 82 percent of the gun deaths that occur in a single year in all developed countries worldwide happen in the United States.

  MYTH: Organizations like Moms Demand Action Just Want to Take Your Guns Away

  Fact: Moms Demand Action is anti–gun violence, not anti-gun. Many of our members own guns. We don’t want to eradicate the Second Amendment. What we want are legally mandated responsibilities to go along with the right of gun ownership, and we want commonsense gun laws that keep guns out of the hands of people who have a demonstrable risk of being dangerous.

  This myth and the fear behind it is a tactic used by the NRA leadership to try to boil the issue down into black-or-white terms; according to them, either everyone gets a gun with no restrictions whatsoever or nobody does. Given that choice, many people will choose gun ownership. But this is a false choice. And it isn’t a choice that even people who are members of the NRA want: in 2012, Frank Luntz, a conservative Republican pollster, polled NRA members and found that more than 74 percent of them support requiring criminal background checks for anyone purchasing a gun, and 87 percent believe that the Second Amendment needs to be balanced by measures to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.12

  MYTH: Strong Gun Laws Don’t Work; Look at Chicago

  Fact: People often place the strong gun laws in Illinois next to the continued gun violence in Chicago as proof that such laws don’t work. But the fact is, Indiana, where I used to live, has incredibly weak gun laws and is right next to Chicago. All someone has to do is get in their car in Chicago, drive twenty minutes to a gun show in Indiana, load up their car with dozens of guns with no background check required, turn right around, and sell those guns to whomever back in Chicago.

  This is not just conjecture: a report done by the City of Chicago found that 60 percent of guns recovered from crime scenes in that city came from out of state, primarily Indiana.13 Unless we build a wall around Chicago, guns are going to cross state borders as
easily as cars do. That is why, even though it’s important to advocate for better state laws to regulate guns, we also fight for federal laws. Because the way things stand right now, states with strong gun laws that are next to states with weak gun laws are much more vulnerable.

  MYTH: Criminals Will Always Find a Way to Get Their Hands on a Gun

  Fact: Background checks stop gun sales to criminals every single day. In fact, between 1998 (when the system was implemented by the FBI) and 2016, background check laws blocked more than three million gun sales to people who could not legally own guns.14

  You can also see evidence of how well background checks work to save lives by looking at two states in particular: Connecticut and Missouri. In 1995, Connecticut passed a law that required gun buyers to get permits—a process that required a background check. The passage of that law is associated with a 15 percent decrease in suicides and a whopping 40 percent decline in gun homicides—and these results are cumulative over the first ten years of the law’s existence.15

  On the other hand, Missouri repealed its background check requirement for handgun purchases in 2007 (a law that had been in place since 1921). Researchers at Johns Hopkins University analyzed death certificate data between 2007 and 2010 and found that the state had seen a 25 percent increase in gun homicides. They also analyzed crime-reporting data from the police through 2012 and saw a 16 percent rise in the murder rate. To make matters worse, the state saw a 200 percent increase in the percentage of guns that had an unusually short time between retail sale and recovery by police—an indicator of gun trafficking that implies that significantly more guns were sold to more people who otherwise would have been prohibited from buying a gun via a licensed sale.16

  For these reasons, supporting state and federal gun laws that close background check loopholes is our number one priority.