Fight Like a Mother

by Shannon Watts

  MYTH: You Already Have to Get a Background Check; What More Do You Need?

  Fact: The federal law requiring a criminal background check before a gun sale can be completed covers only licensed sales. So if you buy a gun at Walmart, yes, you do have to get a background check in every state; but millions of guns are sold every year without a background check through unlicensed sales, through online sales, and at gun shows. You can buy a gun at a garage sale, online, or at a gun show from an unlicensed gun seller with no background check in thirty-one states.

  As of this writing, twenty states have laws on their books to close the loopholes in the federal laws requiring a background check. Much more work needs to be done to ensure that more gun sales follow the background check process.

  MYTH: The Only Thing That Will Stop a Bad Guy with a Gun Is a Good Guy with a Gun

  Fact: The truth is that in a high-stakes situation, it is very difficult even for trained professionals to hit their intended targets with a bullet. Even New York City police officers have only a 34 percent accuracy rate.17 Also, armed security professionals were present during the mass shootings at the schools in Santa Fe, Texas; Parkland, Florida; and Columbine, Colorado; and at Virginia Tech—and they couldn’t stop the carnage.

  The NRA likes to tell a story about a man who allegedly saved the day during a 2017 mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where twenty-five people and an unborn baby were shot and killed and twenty others were wounded. On this November Sunday, a man who was having an argument with his mother-in-law suited up in tactical gear and a bulletproof vest and went to the church where she attended services (although she was not present that day) and launched his attack on the congregants. A local resident with a rifle confronted the shooter after he exited the church and pursued him by car. Ultimately, the shooter was shot twice by this “good guy with a gun”—in the thigh and in the torso—before the shooter shot himself in the head and died.18

  The NRA went to town claiming this as a win for “good guys with guns.” And while the man who chased the shooter did display bravery, is this what has to happen in order to be considered a “win” in America today?—a shooter has to kill twenty-six people and wound twenty others before killing himself?

  Most people don’t realize that it takes a ton of training and experience to be able to use a weapon with any accuracy in a stressful situation. The military requires extensive training before a soldier can carry any new weapon and requires yearly requalification on that weapon for the soldier to continue using it, since knowing how to shoot a gun and shooting it accurately are skills that can wane over time. Yet every single year the NRA is trying to strip from state laws mandatory training around gun ownership.

  MYTH: Mass Shooters Target “Gun-Free Zones”

  Fact: This myth is closely related to the myth that “only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun” by suggesting that mass shooters (a mass shooting is defined by the FBI as an incident in one geographical location where four or more people are killed by gun violence,19 although a federal law defines it as an incident with three or more victims20—we use the FBI’s definition) seek out places where guns are prohibited for the scenes of their crime. Evidence clearly refutes this idea.

  Everytown for Gun Safety analyzed all 156 mass shootings that occurred between 2009 and 2016 and found that only 10 percent happened in a “gun-free zone.” It also found that most of these instances—63 percent—occurred in private homes, which makes sense when you learn that more than half (54 percent) of mass shootings are related to domestic or family violence.21

  MYTH: Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People

  Fact: This is exactly why we fight so hard for background checks on people; if people kill people, no one should be able to buy a gun without first undergoing a criminal background check. This is the most effective way to keep guns out of the hands of people who have dangerous histories. We know that commonsense laws to keep people such as domestic abusers and violent criminals from having guns save lives. And it’s also why we want mandatory gun safety training for concealed permit holders. Guns in the hands of the unskilled is a recipe for disaster.

  MYTH: Gun Violence Isn’t a Gun Issue, It’s a Mental Health Issue

  Fact: The whole world struggles with mental health issues. According to the World Health Organization, the Americas have only 21 percent of worldwide cases of anxiety and 15 percent of incidences of depression,22 but the United States alone has a gun murder rate that is twenty times higher than that in other developed countries. Blaming mental illness for gun violence is the same as blaming movies, video games, or the culture at large—it’s a tactic meant solely to distract from the real issue, which is easy access to guns, even for people with a history of criminal activity, and weak gun laws. In fact, people with mental illnesses are much more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators.23

  However, many mass shooters have a history of mental illness—in fact, 42 percent of mass shooters “exhibited warning signs before the shooting indicating that they posed a danger to themselves or others.”24 This makes it all the more important that we pass red flag laws. Some of these laws, such as the one passed in Delaware in 2018, also allow mental health professionals to report people who are exhibiting dangerous behavior and procure a court order to have their guns removed temporarily.25

  MYTH: Gun Ownership Is a Constitutional Right, so It Can’t Be Regulated

  Fact: Constitutional rights can be regulated—after all, you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater (a regulation of the First Amendment right of free speech). Even Antonin Scalia, the stalwart conservative Supreme Court justice who died in 2016, wrote in his opinion of the landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller—in which the Court upheld an individual’s right to have a gun, striking down the District’s ban on handguns—that the Second Amendment can be regulated: “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Pressing his point further, Scalia continued: “The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”26

  The NRA will talk about the right to bear arms as a God-given right, as if God wrote the Second Amendment. But it is instead a human-given right, a right given by a government, and it can be regulated by the same.

  MYTH: Guns Make Women Safer

  Fact: Women in the United States—which has more guns than the next twenty-five countries combined—are eleven times more likely to be killed by a gun than women in other high-income countries.27 This is in large part because of the fact that if a gun is readily available during a domestic violence situation, a woman is five times more likely to be killed. In an average month, fifty American women are shot to death by an intimate partner, and nearly one million American women alive today have been shot or shot at by an intimate partner. If that’s not bad enough, four and a half million American women alive today have been threatened by an intimate partner with a gun.28

  Here’s what does make women safer: background checks. In fact, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has blocked more than three hundred thousand gun sales to domestic abusers since its inception in 1998,29 and it continues to save lives every day: one in seven unlawful gun buyers stopped by a federal background check is a domestic abuser.30 In states that go beyond federal law and require background checks on all handgun sales, the rate of women shot to death by intimate partners is 47 percent lower.31

  The problem is that there are too many gaps in federal and state gun laws that leave women vulnerable:

  Although background checks do stop abusers from purchasing guns every day, as I’ve covered, the system doesn’t app
ly to online sales, sales at gun shows, or sales from unlicensed dealers. In a 2013 report, Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that one of every thirty people who sought to buy a gun through the website armslist.com had a criminal record that would prohibit them from purchasing a gun if they were required to pass a background check—meaning that an estimated twenty-five thousand guns were sold to criminals who had felony or domestic abuse records through this site.32

  There are two important categories of domestic abusers that laws typically don’t cover: convicted stalkers and abusive dating partners (known as the “boyfriend loophole”). This is especially alarming considering that more American women are killed by people they are dating than by their spouses.33

  Many times, state law doesn’t back up federal law. Without matching provisions in state law, local law enforcement has no way to enforce federal restrictions. Federal law prohibits convicted domestic abusers from possessing a gun, but it doesn’t affirmatively require them to turn in any guns they already own. Neither do the laws in thirty-five states. Thirty-five states!34

  We still have a long way to go on keeping women safe from guns, particularly in domestic abuse settings, which is why working to get state laws passed that provide clear, enforceable laws that do just that is so important. The good news is that since 2012, twenty-eight states plus the District of Columbia have strengthened their laws to keep guns away from domestic abusers. And we are not letting up anytime soon.

  MYTH: Arming Teachers Will Make Kids Safer

  Fact: The push to arm teachers isn’t, at its root, about keeping kids safer. It’s about selling more guns. Since Donald Trump was elected president, gun sales have plummeted because there’s no boogeyman in the White House to make people afraid that their guns will be taken away from them. Known as the “Trump Slump,” this downturn in gun sales is hurting gun manufacturers: American Outdoor Brands, the manufacturer of Smith & Wesson guns, announced a 32 percent decline in sales for the third quarter of 2017, and giant gun maker Remington filed bankruptcy in February 2018, saying that it had between $100 million and $500 million in debts.35

  There are 3.6 million teachers in the United States. Arming even a fraction of them would go a long way toward replenishing the coffers of gun manufacturers and, in turn, the NRA.

  The other market being targeted in this attempt to “harden” schools is kids. If every kid gets used to seeing guns in school, they’ll be that much more likely to want to own a gun as an adult. Worse yet, the plan that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is considering as I write this book would use funds earmarked for the Student Support and Academic Enrichment program in the country’s poorest schools to buy firearms and provide firearm training. Frankly, it’s hard not to see this push as an attempt to further defund and destabilize public education.

  On top of all this, schools could never be armed enough to prevent deadly school shootings. Remember, armed guards were present at the schools in Santa Fe, Texas; Parkland, Florida; and Columbine, Colorado; and at Virginia Tech—and they weren’t able to stop the murder of innocent kids and others. And these were trained security professionals. How would teachers, who are trained to educate, be able to keep their cool in such a stressful situation and take out a shooter without injuring—or worse, killing—someone who isn’t their intended target? Don’t forget, even New York City police hit their intended targets less than 34 percent of the time.

  MYTH: The Pockets of the NRA Are Just Too Deep; It’s Pointless to Fight Against It

  Fact: The NRA itself admits that it is in financial trouble. The organization ended 2017—the year of its most recent IRS tax filing at the time of this writing—with a deficit of nearly $32 million. Compare that to 2015, which it ended with a $27.8 million surplus.36 The Trump Slump, which is hurting gun manufacturers, is in turn hurting the NRA, which is primarily funded by those manufacturers.

  Part of the NRA’s financial woes can be linked to the actions of New York State financial regulators, who in 2018 ruled that an insurance policy the NRA called “Carry Guard”—intended to reimburse NRA members who incurred legal costs as the result of firing a legal gun—“unlawfully provided liability insurance to gun owners for certain acts of intentional wrongdoing.”37 As a result, the NRA’s insurance partners were forced to pay a $7 million fine and discontinue the policy.

  In the wake of this investigation, the New York Department of Financial Services cautioned other insurance companies and financial institutions in the state to “review any relationships they have with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations, and to take prompt actions to managing [sic] these risks and promote public health and safety.”38

  The NRA responded with a lawsuit against New York governor Andrew Cuomo, which complained that the organization had been subjected to a “blacklisting campaign” that had caused “tens of millions of dollars in damages” and that could soon render it “unable to exist.”39 (Coverage of this filing in the media by Rolling Stone, among others, prompted many people on Twitter to offer “thoughts and prayers” to the NRA—sometimes irony is just delicious.)

  After Parkland, other US businesses severed their ties with the NRA: the Bank of Omaha discontinued its NRA Visa card, and dozens of companies dropped their NRA discounts, including Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Allied and North American Van Lines, Avis, Budget, Hertz, Best Western Hotels, Wyndham Hotels, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines.40 The tide has already begun to turn on the NRA’s financial health and its credibility in the business world.

  The NRA’s influence in the political realm has started to wane too. The election of Donald Trump notwithstanding—it spent $30 million on his campaign—the money it spends to sway elections is having less of an effect. In 2017, the NRA spent $2 million in Virginia supporting candidates who were anti–gun regulation, and it lost every major race in that state; the governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general who were elected all support gun-sense legislation. The Virginia House of Delegates also flipped to blue. Gun violence was one of the top three voting issues.

  Virginia Moms Demand Action volunteers can take a lot of credit for these results. They made thousands of phone calls, showed up at campaign rallies, and held nearly one hundred voter canvasses.

  The NRA has had diminishing returns on its investment in elections for several years: in 2012, 95 percent of the $18.3 million it spent on that election cycle was on elections its candidates lost.41

  Looking at the Data Can Change Your Perspective

  One final thing that research and data have done for me personally and for Moms Demand Action as a whole is to open our eyes to the reality of how much bigger the issue of gun violence is for people of color in the United States.

  I fully admit that I was living in a bubble when I started this journey. As I’ve said, my biggest worry was whether my kids would make friends and do well in school. And seeing the data made me realize just how many moms were afraid every day that someone they love would be shot. I go into more detail in Chapter 9, but to give you a preview, black Americans are ten times more likely than white Americans to die by gun homicide.42 If you are white and you have any level of fear that your kids and loved ones are vulnerable to gun violence, multiply that feeling by ten to start to get a glimpse of how much worse things are for African Americans.

  When you start to become more interested in data, remember to keep an open mind and prepare to see stats that you never even thought to measure—it will change your work, and it will change you. It certainly changed our organization and helped us realize we had to build a bigger, more inclusive tent. Whether you’re building an organization or getting involved in a cause, it’s important that you look at the numbers through the lens of all the different populations that are affected by the issue you’re seeking to improve.

  9

  Build a Big Tent

  For me and so many of our volunteers, the Sandy Hook shooting was a defining moment in our lives—the realization that children as young as six years old c
ould be murdered inside the sanctity of their elementary schools was more than we could bear. It made gun violence personal for us. It catalyzed us to take action, to do whatever we could to prevent such shootings from happening in the future.

  For you, something else might have made you say “enough is enough,” whether it was Parkland, Las Vegas, the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018, or a personal connection to another issue. Perhaps your catalyst hasn’t happened yet. Every activist, working on any cause, has their own unique experience inspiring them to get involved. Whatever it is, that moment feels incredibly personal. But it’s important to remember: even though you may feel that you have found “your” cause, it is not yours alone. Nor is your moment more important than someone else’s turning point moment. To take on any issue effectively, you have to keep your ears, eyes, and heart open to the experiences of others and welcome diverse groups of people into your fold. Being inclusive and equitable—and not just exerting your will, which, well-intentioned though it may be, is limited by your own point of view—is the only way to create change that benefits everyone.

  When you build a tent big enough for every population that’s affected by and cares about your cause, you combine your collective power into something bigger than any one group. Inclusion, intersectionality, and diversity aren’t just buzzwords—they’re a key component of a successful organization’s strategy.

  Waking Up to Injustice

  I admit that in the early days of Moms Demand Action, I was thinking of gun violence very narrowly, as primarily a problem centered around mass shootings. I had a lot of learning to do—a lot of stepping outside my own bubble and seeing how my understanding of gun violence was so starkly different from the reality that many Americans live every day.