How We’ll Save Our Kids From the Gun Lobby’s Greed with Shannon Watts

May 26, 2022

Amanda Doyle:

Hello, family. This is Amanda. We are speaking at a very tender moment. This is too much. It’s too much heartbreak, too much rage, too much unspeakable tragedy, too much, especially as we grieve and rage and vow never again, only to endure it again and again and again. We don’t know what to say to ourselves because “Never again” feels like a lie. We don’t know what to say to our kids because promising they’ll be safe at school today feels like a lie. We feel ashamed that part of us is numb to the horror that 10 years ago felt unfathomable. I want you to know that this feels like too much for our hearts and minds because it is. It insults our souls and shuts down our heads and hearts because we were never made to live like this and die like this.

Amanda Doyle:

I’m asking you to please stay here with us. Because your soul rages against this, you may be tempted to turn this off and not listen to this conversation. We understand if you must, but we also understand that your soul rages against this because you know better and you deserve better. And if we are ever going to have better, it will be because we listen to the raging of our souls. It feels like if there was not a solve. After Sandy Hook 10 years ago, or Parkland four years ago, there isn’t ever going to be change. But the moral arc of the universe is long, too fucking long, and it bends only when forced to by the strength of our raging souls.

Amanda Doyle:

It took a hundred-year long fight for women to secure the right to vote. It took a hundred-year long fight after the Civil War to end legalized racial segregation. A hundred years. What would’ve happened if on year 10, folks had decided that hope was a feeling instead of a discipline? Hopelessness is not hard. Hopelessness is a resignation, a luxury folks might have if their children were not being sacrificed on the altar of profits and power. Hopelessness is not a way of people who do hard things. Hope can do hard things. We must listen to our souls, dig deep, commit to the discipline of hope, and take our place in the struggle for ourselves and our children.

Amanda Doyle:

Change is incremental, and it is sometimes quiet, and it is happening. I promise you it is happening. In today’s conversation, we are sharing the change that is happening, and we are asking you to get involved in two ways: First, by joining the legion of like-minded souls committed to this fight at Moms Demand Action; and second, by giving what you can at togetherrising.org/give. Every penny we receive at togetherrising.org/give this week will go to provide support and help protect our families and babies from living like this and dying like this.

Amanda Doyle:

We recorded this episode with Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, the largest ever grassroots counter movement to the gun lobby, on the week that an 18-year-old white man, radicalized online by white supremacist websites, bought an assault weapon, walked into a grocery store in Buffalo, targeted and slaughtered 10 Black people while chillingly apologizing to white people. Before we could even air the episode, an 18-year-old man bought two assault weapons, walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and massacred 19 fourth graders and two educators. Shannon joined me for a brief update to our conversation, and the conversation following that with Glennon, Shannon, and me was taped the week of the Buffalo shooting. Thank you for doing hard things, for honoring the raging in your soul, and using it to bend the arc. And it bends only when forced by the rage of our burning souls.

Amanda Doyle:

Shannon, we spoke about a week ago and tragically are speaking again because of the massacre that happened this week to our babies in Texas. It feels inevitable. It feels like it’s just something that’s happening all the time. Something you said yesterday stuck with me. You said, “School shootings are not fucking acts of nature, like hurricanes and tornadoes. They are manmade acts of inaction of cowardice, of corruption by all lawmakers who refused to pass laws proven by data to stop preventable senseless shootings, like the one that happened this week. What could have happened differently if the Texas lawmakers that are sending their thoughts and prayers put their constituents’ lives before their power? What could have happened?

Shannon Watts:

I mean, you can look at the UK. You can look at New Zealand. You can look at Australia, all countries that acted after horrific school shooting, mass shooting tragedies in their country. We’ve talked about this, the fact that 110 people are shot and killed in this country every day. Divide that by four, and you have the amount of mass shootings that happen every day in this country. Texas is home to four of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in our nation. There was a real opportunity for state lawmakers there to pass common-sense gun legislation in the wake of those tragedies. What did they do? They doubled down and they pass things like permitless carry, shown by data to result in more gun violence and more gun death. These lawmakers are allowing us to be killed. They are allowing the carnage to continue in our communities.

Shannon Watts:

I feel like in times of tragedy, very uniquely American tragedy, that sometimes the reaction is hopelessness or cynicism. It can’t be. Allow yourself to grieve, allow yourself to be distraught, allow self-care, but none of us can sit on the sidelines anymore. If you are part of the 50% of this country that hasn’t experienced gun violence, God bless you, it is coming to your community. It is coming to your community. Find a piece of this work that you are passionate about. Whether it’s legislative work, electoral work, cultural work, it all matters, it all adds up, it all saves lives. Do it. We are asking everyone to text the word act to 64433, and we will plug you in where you live and help you fight back against these lawmakers who do not care if your kids are killed.

Amanda Doyle:

I think it’s really important what you say about this not being something where we all just need to assess whether we have the appropriate amount of hope, or assess whether we believe or have faith that it’s going to get better. And you present it in a way that isn’t about hope at all. It’s about an expectation, you say, that all Americans should have, that lawmakers pass laws based on data, integrity, and a commitment to uphold their sworn duty to protect constituents. You don’t have to decide whether you have hope that this is going to get better. You have to decide whether you deserve to have the expectation that your lawmakers are going to put the lives of you and your family before their own hold-on power.

Amanda Doyle:

In Texas right now, we see the thoughts and prayers being disseminated from crews, from Abbott, senator and governor of Texas, in route to Houston tomorrow, where they will be at the NRA convention. First of all, guns are not allowed in the spaces where Trump and the NRA executives will be speaking. Why is that?

Shannon Watts:

Of course not. Of course not. There are never guns where the executives and speakers are because they’re afraid of getting shot.

Amanda Doyle:

In 2021, Texas lawmakers lowered the age to 18 to buy a gun. Is that correct? So even last year.

Shannon Watts:

So what Texas has done is to continually weaken gun laws. In 2021, they made some exceptions to start carrying a gun, a handgun, if you’re 18. And then what they did later that year was to pass something called permitless carry. So right now, open carry is pretty much unregulated in the state of Texas. You can openly carry a semi-automatic rifle. There’s no age limit. There’s no permit required. There’s no background check. There’s no training. Now, pretty much the same way for handguns. Permitless carry means you can carry a heavy loaded handgun in public with no background check or training. And so how would someone know how old you are, if you buy, for example, a gun from an unlicensed dealer in Texas that doesn’t require a background check?

Shannon Watts:

When you look at the data associated with these laws, like permitless carry, they clearly increase gun violence. Police officers, law enforcement, general citizens of Texas opposed these laws. They begged lawmakers not to do it. And they did it anyway because, number one, they want the support of the gun lobby. They want the gun lobby’s dollars. They don’t want to get primaried. But number two, and I can tell you this from spending a lot of time in state houses, some of these lawmakers really have bought into the gun extremism and the rhetoric of the gun lobby for decades. They truly, truly have become gun extremists. They believe it. I mean, there was a study that just came out that showed that one in five Republican lawmakers belongs to a right wing group, like the Oath Keepers, or Proud Boys, or QAnon. That’s over 22%. So this is taken root as part of the policy platform of the far right. Gun lobbies are essentially paying our lawmakers to write laws that increase their profits. That makes it holy and entirely political.

Shannon Watts:

A long time ago, we said thoughts and prayers. That’s bullshit. We want action. We are going to scream and shout every time there’s a shooting tragedy in this country, and not just mass shootings. We are going to completely ignore anyone who criticizes us and says that we are playing politics. This is political. Lives are on the line. And whatever it takes to make people pay attention, whether it’s our lawmakers or average civilians who we need to get involved in this issue, we are going to do it. And I want to be clear that what Republicans aligned with the gun lobby are going to do now is to try to run out the clock. Right? They’re going to point at other issues. We already see Ted Cruz saying that we need more security in our schools, even though there were armed guards in both of the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. We’re going to see them blaming violent video games, mental illness, single parents, you name it. They’re going to find the straw man.

Shannon Watts:

It’s up to us when this clock runs out. And it can keep going all the way through November. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s time to move on or that people have already forgotten about this. We make that decision. We make that choice every morning when we wake up. Are we going to keep doing the work? This work matters. It all adds up. We will win, but we need every vote and every voice working on this issue because every day, 110 people are shot and killed, and hundreds more wounded. We don’t have the luxury of time.

Amanda Doyle:

Yes. Thank you for joining us again, Shannon, and for all of your time and for all of your work. In the episode that follows, we tell you even more ways to get involved in Moms Demand and all of the incredible work that you all are doing and how we can join you in that work. Thank you, Shannon.

Shannon Watts:

Thank you so much.

Glennon Doyle:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today is a day where we actually do hard things. Today, we are going to talk about the gun crisis in America and how we got to this place of great suffering, and what we can do and say today to make our families safer from gun violence. In Untamed, I talked about this concept that I learned in the beginning of my nonprofit work, which was this quote actually by Desmond Tutu. He said, “You can only pull people out of the river for so long before you have to look upstream to find out who’s pushing them in.”

Glennon Doyle:

And that idea changed my life. Actually, it changed my concept of what I was meant to do here from philanthropy to activism. Philanthropy being pulling people out of the river, which is very important, and activism being confronting who’s pushing them in, because I learned that where there is great suffering, there is always great profit upstream. So today we are going to go upstream. We’re going to find out who is profiting from America’s suffering, and we’re going to figure out what we can do and say today to confront them upstream. Sister, go for it.

Amanda Doyle:

So there are almost 400 million civilian-owned guns in the US. That is enough for every man, woman, and child to own one and still have 67 million guns left over. We have 25 times the guns of any peer nation. So it’s safe to say that America is uniquely obsessed with guns. And I think it’s important to state at the outset that you and I, Glennon, represent different perspectives on guns. You hate guns guts clearly and in every way. In some ways, I think that my experience may be more representative of Middle America. We had guns in the house growing up.

Amanda Doyle:

When I was in fifth grade, for Christmas, I received my first .22 rifle. Dad and I would go to the firing range on weekends together to shoot. I know how to take apart a gun and clean a gun and handle a gun and store a gun. My ex-husband was part of an elite special forces unit, and we always had several firearms in our home. So I’ve been around guns my whole life. And in my experience, it’s those who have the greatest respect for firearms who also understand the necessity of responsible gun ownership and common sense regulation.

Amanda Doyle:

I think the whole point is that we are being lied to. We are being told that when it comes to common-sense gun regulation, this country is deeply divided. And that is utter horseshit. 90% of Americans believe that background checks and red flag laws, which are the laws that keep guns from people who are judged to be a danger to themselves or others, are in favor of those. 90% of Americans and remarkably 80% of gun owners, and 74% of actual NRA members also believe this. So this is not about gun-loving Americans versus gun-hating Americans. This is about the average American who wants to be able to keep their right to have guns and have common-sense gun regulation that will make their families safer versus a massive profit obsessed gun lobby that defends the corporate interests of a handful of gun manufacturers. It is about how those profits have been ruthlessly defended by the gun lobby and the politicians who do its bidding while the will of the American people and the lives of American people go undefended.

Amanda Doyle:

So today, we are speaking with a woman who said, “Not on my watch will American families go undefended any longer.” Shannon Watts was a stay-at-home mother of five when she founded Moms Demand Action, the nation’s first and largest grassroots movement fighting against gun violence, and the most powerful counter movement to the gun lobby that it has ever faced. Moms Demand Action now has a chapter in every state, and with over eight million supporters, is now larger than the National Rifle Association. For almost 10 years, Moms Demand Action volunteers have stopped the NRA’s priority legislation and state houses roughly 90% of the time. They’ve helped pass hundreds of gun safety laws across the country, changed corporate policies, and educated Americans about secure gun storage. Shannon’s book, Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World, is now available in paperback. Thank you for being here, Shannon.

Shannon Watts:

Thank you so much for having me. Now more than ever, this is such an important conversation.

Amanda Doyle:

Shannon, 96 Americans die from gun violence every day. And to put that in perspective, the US population is 4.2% of the world’s population, but 82% of the world’s gun deaths happen in America. How do we get to this place that is so extraordinarily different from the way the rest of the world lives and the rest of the world dies? Why are we here?

Shannon Watts:

Yeah, well, and sadly, that figure has actually gotten larger since COVID.

Amanda Doyle:

Wow.

Shannon Watts:

There about 110 people in America are shot and killed every single day, hundreds more are wounded. Glennon, you were talking about who’s pushing people in the river, it’s the gun lobby. What we’re seeing happen in this country, the horrific deaths and injuries, are sort of the logical outcome of allowing gun lobbyists who, as you said Amanda, profit from gun sales. We’ve been allowing them essentially to write our gun loss. And how did the NRA sort of become the extremist organization that it is today? I mean, you can go all the way back to the ’60s. That’s when Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968. It was the first major piece of gun legislation since the New Deal. And it included lots of Republican supporters, including Ronald Reagan and even members of the NRA at that time. They said, this is a piece of legislation that “the sportsmen of America can live with.”

Shannon Watts:

There were some hardliners who opposed to this legislation who thought it was too aggressive. And that’s when sort of this backlash to gun safety began. And it was hardened in the early ’90s after the Waco siege. Really, the firearms industry took a very dark turn. They realized marketing militaristic guns and tactical gear to civilians while stoking racism and misogyny and anti-government sediment, that that actually helped them raise money. I think what’s interesting is, it didn’t start as a political motivation. It started as a fundraising motivation, but it quickly became embedded in the politics of the right wing in this country. And we saw it reflected in the actions of, for example, Timothy McVeigh. He was an NRA member who held these conspiratorial ideas about so-called civilian disarmament.

Shannon Watts:

We have seen this pull through the thread all the way up to the insurrection of the Capitol in 2021. And then that brings us really to modern-day mass shootings like Columbine and at Sandy Hook, where the NRA had a lot of opportunity to back down and be part of mainstream America and say, “We support common-sense gun laws, like a background check on every gun sale.” And instead, they doubled down. That’s kind of how we got to where we are today. This ideology is really embedded in right wing politics.

Glennon Doyle:

Just real quick, before we move on from there, I just want to ask, you mentioned Reagan, and I think we think of this as a political issue and it becomes a political issue, but isn’t it all about money at the end of the day? We say, it’s an ideological issue, but the ideology was created and planted in order to fundraise for gun manufacturers.

Shannon Watts:

The root of all evil when it comes to special interests, I think, is money and power. And creating this ideology based on misogyny and racism and hate helped them both raise money, but also maintain power by stoking the base, by creating this very vocal minority that would help them maintain control and pass laws that made more guns in more places.

Glennon Doyle:

Right.

Amanda Doyle:

Right. It’s fear and stoking the flame. I mean, that’s the same reason why the NRA was so pleased when Obama got elected because they could say, “Look, there’s a boogeyman in the White House, and you need to arm yourself because they’re coming for us.” And then they had the Trump slump when Trump was in office because they didn’t have the fear. Their guy was in. Right? So gun sales plummeted.

Glennon Doyle:

That’s really important to know, especially for our pod squad, there has to be a war.

Shannon Watts:

Yep.

Glennon Doyle:

That’s why the right is always stoking. When there’s not an actual war, they create a culture war. So somebody has to be coming to get us so that we have our need to defend ourselves. And the reason we need to defend ourselves is because we need to make money for these gun manufacturers.

Shannon Watts:

That’s exactly right.

Amanda Doyle:

The extremism that you just mentioned in the conspiracy theories, I mean, we are recording this during a week where we just saw an 18-year-old white man who, because he was bored during the pandemic, was radicalized online by white supremacist websites and bought an assault weapon even though he could not buy cigarettes at his age, walked into a grocery store, targeted and killed 10 Black people while chillingly apologizing to the white people he accidentally aimed at before turning his gun on Black people. In addition to anti-Black hate crimes, we’re also seeing an alarming rise in violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and against Jewish people. Can you talk to us about how in order to make Americans safer from gun violence, we just absolutely have to confront this white supremacist extremism that is happening everywhere across our country?

Shannon Watts:

Yeah. I mean, white supremacy is deadly, and in America, guns make it deadlier. Let’s be clear about what happened in Buffalo. A racist white man who was radicalized by this white supremacist rhetoric had easy access to an assault rifle. He massacred Black people because of the color of their skin. And we have seen in the following days that white pundits and right wing politicians are responding by blaming everything from poor parenting to mental illness, to violent video games when the reality is that this was about racism and easy access to guns. We have to speak out against racism. We have to dismantle white supremacy. We also have to make sure that we are not accepting living in a country where gunfire can ring out at any moment. When you look at hate crimes, there are about 10,300 every single year that involve a firearm. And that never make the headlines. When you break that down, that’s about 28 incidents of hate involving a firearm every single day.

Amanda Doyle:

Wow.

Shannon Watts:

And we were just talking about the firearms industry. They’re creating this perfect storm for this type of extremist terror to proliferate. Gun extremism has really become a recruiting tool. It’s an organizing principle. It’s a fundraising tactic. And that’s how they get these young white men through the door. It’s actually often through an online meeting, like in the case of Buffalo. These conspiracy theories that we are talking about right now, because it seems to be what these gunmen attached to, many of those are originated and propagated by the gun lobby. And the point is to stoke fear and to recruit new members in their base. I also want to mention that white supremacy is not a mental illness.

Glennon Doyle:

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Doyle:

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Watts:

It is an ideology. It is a choice. When a white supremacist has easy access to guns, the logical outcome is what we saw in Buffalo. Moms Demand Action volunteers have been ringing the alarm on this for a decade now. These extremists show up at our meetings. They threaten us. They are often open carrying. They want to intimidate and silence us. We’re really at an inflection point in this country. Right? We have to stand up to this dangerous extremism that is putting communities and children, and generally, our safety at risk. And I really think women and moms can be clear voices for sanity and safety.

Amanda Doyle:

You mentioned mental illness, and that’s kind of a go-to move for a, “It’s too early to talk about it so everyone be quiet,” so the moment that a tragedy happens, we are not allowed to speak about it. That’s their rule. Their other rule is say, “It’s mental illness.” So can you-

Glennon Doyle:

If it’s a white person.

Amanda Doyle:

If it’s a white person. Right. Can you walk us through the fact that mentally ill people are more often victims of gun violence than perpetrators and how that’s a-

Glennon Doyle:

Straw man.

Amanda Doyle:

… straw man argument about the mental health issue.

Shannon Watts:

Yeah. There are so many straw man arguments that come up when these shootings happen. They want to deflect, point at everything except the guns themselves. When you look at rates of mental illness in America versus peer nations, they are very similar. What we have in this country is easy access to guns. The data shows it. As you said, people who are mentally ill are much more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators. Look, every peer nation struggles with the same things that we do. All the straw men that you were talking about that are that people point fingers out, whether it’s violent video games or poor parenting, whatever that is, it is in other peer nations as well. You’d almost have to make the argument that we are somehow more evil than other nations. And we simply know that’s not the truth.

Shannon Watts:

The gun lobby has been telling us for decades now that more guns, and Amanda, as you said, there are about 400 million in this country, tens of millions which were sold during COVID, that more guns and fewer gun laws would make us safer. If that were true, we would be the safest nation in the entire world. Instead, we have a 26 times higher gun homicide rate than any peer nation, and a much higher gun suicide rate as well. The data shows us that what the problem is in this country, in addition to systemic racism, is easy access to guns.

Shannon Watts:

When you look at the states in this country that have passed stronger gun laws, it shows they work. When you look at a state like California or New York, they actually have the lowest rates of gun violence in the entire country. At the same time, because we are essentially a nation made up of a patchwork of state gun laws, some stronger than others, some very, very weak, we are all only as safe as the closest state with the weakest gun laws. And so that is why we so often argue for federal action. Legislation has been passed through the House. It’s the US Senate that’s standing in the way. It really is up to all of us to use our voices and our votes to get our lawmakers to listen and to act.

Glennon Doyle:

Shannon, after the recent shooting in Buffalo, you had a tweet that said something like, “These last few shootings brought to you by Fox, the NRA, and the GOP.” And Fox News is largely considered propaganda for the right, so how is it connected? Why is this idea of white men have been in charge in this country? They are being told that their power is going to be taken from them and that they have to protect their entitlement to this power, and the way that they can do that is through guns. Would that be a fair through line? Or how would you say it?

Shannon Watts:

Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, those are sort of concentric overlapping circles, and they have all bought into this agenda, which again was started by the gun lobby. If you go back to when I first started doing this work about a decade ago, we made the bet that it would just take really hard work to expose the gun lobby, to show their corruption, to tackle their agenda and dismantle it in state houses, in boardrooms, in city councils. We did all that work, and the NRA is weaker than they’ve ever been as an organization. They failed to declare bankruptcy. They are out of political power. They’re out of money, and yet their agenda lives on. And we are still trying to remove the stranglehold they have on lawmakers finger by finger. But I think what we didn’t realize was how deeply embedded their agenda would become with those groups you just mentioned, with Fox News, with Christian nationalists. And that it would actually become part of this larger policy platform of the right wing that is anti-trans, anti-abortion, and anti-woman. It has become a part of that. Right? And it’s just incredibly dangerous.

Shannon Watts:

I think the reason that lawmakers on the right have not acted is really three things: First, it would be an admission that the gun lobbyists’ guns everywhere agenda has failed. As I mentioned, we have a 26 times higher gun homicide rate than any pure nation. Second, it would require prioritizing the safety of Black and Latinx communities. They are disproportionately impacted by gun violence, but insufficiently represented by elected officials. And then third, to your point, it would depress the fervor of these right wing extremists who have been stoked for years by conspiracy theories. The motives of the gunman in Buffalo all aligned with that rhetoric. And sadly, that’s become their base, and they don’t want to disenfranchise them.

Glennon Doyle:

Right. And just to be clear, the reason why the misogyny and the homophobia and the anti-trans is because white patriarchy has to have a clear delineation of gender. Right? If they entertain the idea that gender is not immutable and inherent, their entire power structure and hierarchy fails. So they didn’t just throw in misogyny and homophobia and transphobia, it’s essential to their entire power structure, that gender stays, because then, patriarchy could not be above women. That all is so interconnected for them.

Amanda Doyle:

Yes. Not to go off on a tangent, but in the historical framework, you mentioned how Reagan was on the side of the gun bill prior. There’s a very similar parallel situation, what’s happening right now with the women’s right to choose. Reagan, as governor of California, passed one of the most permissive abortion laws in the country until it became politically expedient and he needed the-

Glennon Doyle:

Christian nationalist vote.

Amanda Doyle:

… the Christian nationalist vote and then changed his tune. It’s like, it doesn’t matter what the vehicle is. It’s just whatever the messaging is, whoever controls the messaging, who controls the advertising, who con controls the campaign contributions. It’s just like-

Glennon Doyle:

Right. It’s the right insert. If Jerry Falwell would’ve said, “Reagan, the Christians need you to say protect the dodo birds, and they’ll vote for you,” the whole thing wouldn’t have been guns and abortion. It would’ve been dodo birds. It doesn’t matter. It’s what the right, the Christian nationalists, decide is their pet issue. And then the politicians just have meetings. They have meetings with the religious right, whosever the white man that’s in charge there, and they say, “What do you need me to say? Teach me the language that will dog whistle to your voting block. And then I’ll gather their votes.”

Glennon Doyle:

Shannon, you talk about your son and how he was so traumatized with anxiety by the Aurora, Colorado shooting that you were very afraid to tell him about Sandy Hook. And then when you told him about Sandy Hook, he did not react. He just said, “I understand. That’s what happens in America.” And that happened to us recently. One of our children had a lockdown at their school just a couple weeks ago because a kid called in a threat. What happened was that my child’s classroom was on lockdown, and when I asked her to explain to me what was happening in the room, she told me that the kids were banging on their desks and they would go, “It’s him. It’s him,” pretending that it was the shooter at the door, teasing the children who were afraid because these children, for all intents and purposes, understood that there was a shooter in the school. And I just talked to her about how that’s trauma. They are so desensitized and they’re protecting themselves through humor.

Glennon Doyle:

The way we train our children to expect to be shot through active shooter drills that occur in 95% of K through 12 schools in America, what does this do mentally and emotionally to a kid, even if they’ve never actually experienced physical gun violence? And why the hell are we still doing these drills even though we know that they have no effect, except negative, on our children?

Shannon Watts:

It’s sickening. If I had to do it all over again, my kids are not in school anymore, but I would not allow them to go through these drills. What’s interesting is that many of our first time volunteers come in because they have sent their kindergartener to school for the first time, and they’ve had to hide in the bathroom of their classroom as though that door is going to protect them from the spray of an AR-15. And the parents realize, “I can’t live like this. I’m not going to allow my child to die like this.” You are exactly right, these drills can be traumatizing. The data shows they cause increased anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, worsening school performance, and not just in students, but in teachers as well. We believe these drills, based on data, are doing significant harm to children and their development because kids should feel safe in schools. But as you said, about 90% or more of schools are already doing these drills.

Shannon Watts:

There is a role that parents can play. Our volunteers go school board to school board, state house to state house, and work to change the guidance around these drills. We want to make sure they’re done, for example, in a trauma-informed manner. That means that they don’t simulate gun violence. They don’t do the things you just mentioned, like there’s knocking on desks or there’s someone pretending to be a gunman. In the state of Indiana, there was even an incident where they were shooting teachers with rubber bullets, so they would feel the adrenaline, allegedly, of what an actual active shooter drill would feel like. If schools choose to drill children, they should give parents and students and teachers advanced notice; schools should be working with mental health professionals to make sure the content of these drills is age and developmentally appropriate; and also, schools should be tracking the effectiveness and the impact of these drills. They should collect and track that data.

Shannon Watts:

I also want to point out that mass shootings and school shootings at predominantly white schools almost always get the media attention and the outrage. But the reality is that gunfire and school grounds disproportionately impacts majority, minority school districts. And children, in fact, in America are much more likely to be shot at home, in their community, in their streets. About three million American children witness gun violence every single year, and guns are now the leading cause of death for children and teens. So we focus as an organization on preventing gun violence proactively, keeping it out of schools in the first place. And that starts with ensuring that children can’t access guns because the vast majority of school shooters in this country are actually students.

Amanda Doyle:

That is something that I learned from your organization, Shannon, and that has been a very practical application for my life. The idea that the first time my child is going to a new home, I was very nervous the first time I did it. But just the first time, I sent a text that said, “Bobby’s really looking forward to coming over. I just want to confirm that if you have guns, they are stored, locked, and unloaded. And should he bring a snack?”

Glennon Doyle:

So good.

Amanda Doyle:

I just kind of held my breath, and the text I got back was, “We don’t have guns. I’m so thankful you wrote this. I’m going to start doing this. It never occurred to me.” I’ve started doing it preemptively. If a kid’s coming over to my house, I’ll say, “We have a pool, but it’s always covered. We have a dog that’s never a bit anyone. Also, we don’t have any guns. See you soon.” And I think it makes it easier than when my kid goes to their house to ask them because I’ve preemptively told them. When I was reading in your book about how even five years into this work, you were reminded of how critical it is to ask these questions. Can you tell us that story and about the impact of unsafely stored guns on our kids?

Shannon Watts:

Yeah, that was shocking to me. So about five years into doing this work, I had a son in high school at the time, and he was having the normal struggles kids in high school do. I think he had a breakup. And I just got the impression he was feeling down. It made me think that I should ask my ex-husband, his dad, who I know is a gun owner, “How are you securing your guns?” And I kind of just took for granted. Since we’re friends and he obviously is supportive of the work I do, I would just ask the question, “Do you have any prescription medications in your house, and how are they stored? And also, I know you had a handgun at one point or some hunting guns, how are you storing those? He wrote back and told me that, in fact, the guns were just in his office and so was the ammunition, and they weren’t securely stored.

Shannon Watts:

And I said, “I just need you to go to Dick’s Sporting Goods, please, and buy two safes, one for your guns and one for your ammunition. And make sure that Sam, our son, can’t access the code.” I’m not worried that something’s going to happen, but I don’t want to encourage it. I don’t want to make it easier for something horrible to happen. And Amanda, to your point, 4.6 million children in America live in homes with unsecured guns. We know that school shooters, about 80% of them, get their guns from friends or family. And so secure storage is really just an essential part of home safety at this point. You mentioned asking people. We do that through our program, Be SMART. The goal is to encourage gun owners to keep their guns securely stored, locked, unloaded, separate from ammunition, and to also have even non-gun owners ask the question. I had that own experience myself, but I can’t tell you how many times volunteers have said, “I practice this on my in-laws, and I found out they keep a loaded handgun in a shoebox under a bed where my kids sleeps.”

Shannon Watts:

So, it is on all of us to make sure our guns are securely stored, to make sure we’re asking the question we send kids to friends and families homes, but also as volunteers, we can go school board by school board and encourage them to send home notifications that educate parents and gun owners about secure storage. Something I’m really proud of is that so many of our volunteers have actually run for office and won. One of them, Linda Cavazos, is a survivor, a volunteer, and now she is the school board president in Clark County, Nevada, which is the fifth largest school district in the country. And she helped pass a secure storage notification through the school board there.

Amanda Doyle:

Awesome.

Shannon Watts:

So this is work that changes not just policy, but ultimately the culture.

Amanda Doyle:

That’s amazing. In addition to the straw man arguments, there’s so many myths that I feel like are kind of just propagated in our country and accepted. Can we run through a few of those just so we understand? So the idea that guns make people safer. 63% of Americans say they got their firearm so that they would be safer. Does having a gun make us safer?

Shannon Watts:

Access to a gun triples the risk of death by suicide. Access to a gun doubles the risk of death by homicide. The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five times more likely a woman in that home will be killed. And as I mentioned, 4.6 million children live in homes with unsecured firearms, and nearly 130 children in teens die by an unintentional gunshot every single year, and hundreds more are wounded. So I would say the answer is no.

Amanda Doyle:

Shannon, is the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun a good guy with a gun?

Shannon Watts:

Right. That’s an NRA myth, that we can somehow stop all gun violence by ensuring we always have this good guy nearby with a gun. And it ignores reality. It frankly makes no sense, especially when you realize that police officers are able to hit a moving target less than 30% of the time. These are very highly trained people. As we just saw in Buffalo at a supermarket, there was an armed security guard there. He was no match for an armed white supremacist in ballistic gear. And in a public shooting in Colorado, law enforcement, in fact, mistook the so-called good guy with a gun as the shooter and killed him. When you are in a high stake situation, it is so difficult, even for trained professionals, to hit an intended target. And again, if guns everywhere made us safer, America would be the safest country on earth.

Amanda Doyle:

I love your response to “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Tell us why that’s correct.

Shannon Watts:

That is correct. And that’s why we want background checks on people and training for people. People with guns kill people and much more efficiently, by the way, than people without guns, whether it’s themselves or others. The gun lobby likes to pretend that firearm suicide doesn’t exist when in fact it is gun violence, and six out of every 10 gun deaths in this country are suicides. When people attempt suicide by firearm, nine out of 10 times, they don’t get a second chance. And that also ignores the hundreds of thousands of instances of unintentional shootings by children and of children. Also, if the gun lobby really thought this, they would support laws that prevented people who shouldn’t have access to guns from getting them. They would help close background check loopholes. They would disarm domestic abusers. And instead, they stand in the way of those laws every single time.

Amanda Doyle:

Let’s talk about background checks because I think America would be surprised to know the way the law works. So federal law is that background checks on every licensed sale. Tell us about the wide swath of the ecosystem that is completely outside of that requirement, where so many people get their guns every day.

Shannon Watts:

So when a person tries to buy a gun from a gun store, the buyer has to fill out a federal form. That form goes to an FBI database, and they verify the buyer doesn’t have a criminal record, or isn’t a prohibited purchaser. Since 1998, when the system launched, more than 300 million background checks have been done, leading to about 1.5 million denials. That is significant. There’s these myths around background checks. And one of them is that everyone in this country has to have a background check when they buy a gun. That is not true. Federal law only requires background checks for gun sales by licensed dealers. It does not require background checks on guns sold by unlicensed dealers. And that includes non-dealers, for example, online or at gun shows, even garage sales. And we know about 22% of Americans report that they bought their most recent gun without a background check. That’s millions of sales every single year with no background check.

Shannon Watts:

We want to close that loophole. We have done so now. In 21 states and Washington DC, you now have to have a background check on both licensed and unlicensed sales. The data shows that that is absolutely fundamental to our gun safety system, that it saves lives, that states that have background checks on all handgun sales have lower firearm homicide rates, lower firearm suicide rates, lower firearm trafficking. And then there’s one other loophole, and it’s called the Charleston loophole. So yes, licensed gun sales require a background check, but if it takes more than three days, the dealer can go ahead and sell that gun. Now, why would a background check that usually takes less than 30 minutes take three days? Because someone has a complicated criminal history.

Shannon Watts:

If you look at the gunman at the AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, he was a prohibited purchaser. He should not have been able to buy a firearm, but because his background check took more than three days, the licensed dealer went ahead and sold it. So we have now gone into 20 states and Washington, DC, and closed that loophole. And now, authorities have longer than three days to complete a background check. So those are some of the loopholes that we want to close at the federal level, but right now we’re going and doing it state by state.

Amanda Doyle:

So, I just want to say for the record that the three things that Moms Demand Action is trying to prioritize to make us safer are the closing of the loopholes on background checks; they are keeping firearms out of the hands of known domestic abusers; and passing the red flag laws that if you have proven to be a danger to yourself or others, you can not have your firearms. Okay, those are the three things.

Shannon Watts:

Those are three incredibly important things. We are working on this issue as an organization legislatively. So we work to pass good gun laws and stop bad gun laws. As you mentioned, we have a 90% track record of stopping laws like arming teachers and putting guns on college campuses and expanding standard ground. We work on this electorally. In addition to getting out the vote for what we call Gun Sense Candidates, we also train our own volunteers to run for office and to become campaign managers. And then we work on this culturally, and that includes education around secure storage and educating people about how to interrupt or stop gun suicide. So, this is a holistic approach to change this issue, and it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. But I think, sometimes, because there hasn’t been this cathartic moment in Congress, people think we’re not making headway, or we’re not making progress when in fact, we are absolutely beating the gun lobby’s ass. In city councils and school boards and state houses, every single day, it’s drips on a rock, but it is eventually a battle that we will win.

Glennon Doyle:

Shannon, you talked about open carry. I’ve been involved with Moms Demand Action with my local groups.

Shannon Watts:

Yes.

Glennon Doyle:

And when I lived in Naples, I went with a group of Moms Demand Action volunteers to the office of Kathleen Passidomo, who is now a Republican Senator. And I was nervous because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And I thought, I don’t know enough to go do this. What was shocking to me when I got there was I didn’t know a lot and she knew less. She really did. I do think that’s an important thing to mention, is that we think we’re going to go into these situations and these rooms are going to be terrifying because people are, and they don’t know. They don’t know. I will tell you this. We were there to resist and educate her about why it might not be a good idea to continue pressing open carry on school campuses, I think it was, then.

Shannon Watts:

Imagine.

Glennon Doyle:

Right. So she thought it was important for people’s rights to be able to step onto any school campus with a gun without any checks on that, just walk onto any campus with a gun. And I said to her, “When we came in here to this office to visit you for our appointment, we had to walk through three metal detectors. We had to take our purses, put them out on the table. We were scanned for guns. Why did that happen?” And she said, “Well, you wouldn’t believe the crazies who come in here. You wouldn’t believe we have to protect ourselves.” And I said, “How dare you? You, you require safety for yourself by checking for guns at your door while you are pushing legislation for your constituents to not be protected from guns. Why is it that you insist upon protection that you will not insist on for your constituents?” It’s stunning.

Shannon Watts:

One thing I have learned in the last decade is that lawmakers are not rocket scientists.

Glennon Doyle:

Nope.

Shannon Watts:

You probably, as an activist, care about this issue or many issues more than they do. You probably know more than your lawmaker does. I also thought, not only that my lawmakers were really smart, but I also assumed they really cared. And I think that’s the other shocking thing, is so often I’ve realized that, we go back to the beginning of this conversation, money and power. And that is why it’s so incredibly important. I really do think there is a moral imperative in this country right now for women to run for office or to run campaigns. And we have had hundreds of volunteers now decide that they want to move from not just shaping policy, but to actually making it.

Shannon Watts:

One of those volunteers who I’m incredibly proud to call a friend is Congresswoman Lucy McBath in Georgia. Lucy is a gun violence survivor whose son Jordan Davis was shot and killed, a Black 17-year old who was sitting at a gas station, listening to music in his car, when a white man began arguing with him over the music and then opened fire, killing Jordan immediately. That happened a month before the Sandy Hook School shooting tragedy, which is what got me off the sidelines. And Lucy and I were introduced just months later. She became such a fierce advocate for her son and such an incredible voice as a spokesperson for our organization. And then she became a colleague. She started doing this work as a staff member. And then, she decided after the Parkland shooting tragedy that she needed to move from not just shaping policy, but to actually making it. And she won a seat held by Republicans for 30 years, Newt Gingrich’s old seat in Georgia.

Amanda Doyle:

Ah, beautiful. Hallelujah.

Shannon Watts:

And the first thing she did was to pass gun reform legislation through the US House, the first time in two decades. Now, yes, we need the US Senate to pass that legislation, but it goes to show how important it is to use your voice, to use your vote, and to realize that we cannot sit silently on the sidelines and expect other people to do this work. Over the weekend, when the horrific shooting in Buffalo happened, friends of mine who aren’t activists messaged me and said, “I don’t know how you do this. I feel hopeless.” And I tweeted, “What other fucking choice do I have?” What other choice do any of us have? We cannot sit silently while our brothers and sisters, particularly our Black and Brown brothers and sisters who are most impacted by this issue, are in danger. So find a piece of the work that you are passionate about and do it. Even if you only have an hour a week, it all adds up and it all matters.

Amanda Doyle:

It matters so much the way you built this movement, the way that you took on the NRA was with your heartbreak turning into action, taking the collective heartbreak of all of the other people who you were connected to that just said, “I don’t know what the answer is. I just know enough. Enough. And we are not waiting on other people to save us. We need to be the ones.” And it’s just remarkable to see. My mom’s been in congressional hearings with Moms Demand downtown. So many people that I know that don’t feel like they have the specific skillset or the experience just get to show up, and your people are so welcoming and they train you and they tell you everything you need to know.

Glennon Doyle:

Yep.

Amanda Doyle:

And they text you after a meeting and they say, “Here’s the opportunities to get involved.” It’s just a brilliant way to take women who know what is right and know that what they’re looking at is not it and are willing to give some of their passion and love for it. And what you’ve built is just amazing. It’s remarkable.

Shannon Watts:

Well, thank you. I think the NRA’s worst nightmare was that women and moms would rise up against it because we are going to protect our kids. And that’s exactly what has happened, this army of angry moms. And we’re not just moms anymore, right? We’re students and survivors and women and non-moms and dads. But we have said, “Not in our community, you won’t. You will not do this in our country.” I want to say that I got off the sidelines because of the Sandy Hook School shooting. I was scared my kids weren’t safe in their schools. I was a stay-at-home mom, a white woman in suburban Indiana, and it took that shooting to get me involved. But shame on me and shame on anyone who doesn’t feel the urge to act when gun violence is killing 100 people every single day. And let’s be clear, Black women have been on the front line of this fight for decades to protect all of our children. And the least that we can do is to join arms.

Amanda Doyle:

Shannon, we do something called the Next Right Thing on every podcast. Can you offer us one concrete thing that we can do today to become part of the solution and then one concrete thing that we can do today to make ourselves and are people that we love safer from gun violence?

Shannon Watts:

First, I would say get involved. Again we’re not just moms. We’re all caring people. It is so easy. Text the word ready to 64433. And pretty instantaneously, a volunteer will call you and tell you how to plug in where you live. And I would also ask people to look in their homes, if they’re gun owners, and to make sure that their guns are securely stored; and if you’re not a gun owner, to ask that question when you send your kids to friends’ and families’ homes.

Glennon Doyle:

I have a follow-up Next Right Thing. You said, Shannon, if you were able to do it again, you would not have your children participate in those drills. Would you call the school and say, “I want to know before the drill,” and take your kid out? 

Shannon Watts:

If I had to do it all over again, I would tell the school that I did not want my children to participate in these drills. And on days that there were drills, I would keep my kids home during those hours.

Glennon Doyle:

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Amanda Doyle:

Because the point being, when people say, “Oh, well, it’s just necessary. Kids deserve to be safe in their schools,” there is no evidence to suggest that there is any efficacy to these drills, but plenty of evidence to say that it contributes to anxiety and depression and sleeplessness and being consumed by fear of death. So yes, children do deserve to be safe in their schools, but we are not going to pretend this horseshit drill is doing it. We’re going to join Moms Demand, and we are going to ensure that they are actually safe in their schools.

Shannon Watts:

That’s right. Let’s keep guns out of the schools in the first place. These drills act as though some mythical man is coming out of the shadows and going into your school when the reality is that 80% of school shooters are students. Those guns are getting into the hands of kids in their homes.

Glennon Doyle:

I had a situation where one of my children told me that during the drill, one of the teachers asked for a little boy volunteers to be the one to barricade the door with a table.

Amanda Doyle:

Oh, my God.

Glennon Doyle:

For little boys in that room, the messages that that taught that class, and bless these teachers, they’re in situations that they should not be in, but think about that. Prepare for your death. Little boys, which one of you? You’re the ones should sacrifice yourself. Raise your hand. Who’s going to die for their class? It’s just enough.

Amanda Doyle:

All because we are asking eighth graders to be heroes because we are deciding to be cowards.

Glennon Doyle:

Because we cannot.

Amanda Doyle:

And we are fine with our elected officials being cowards.

Glennon Doyle:

Right.

Shannon Watts:

Well, and going back to money, this is a billion-dollar industry, school safety, and who plays a part in that? The gun lobby. They have a whole so-called school safety program that they want public schools to enroll in. And so when you look at why these drills are being done and why they’re so elaborate and why they are full of dangerous misinformation, it’s because the gun lobby is fine inculcating that fear, and maybe even the next generation of gun owners.

Amanda Doyle:

Mm-hmm.

Glennon Doyle:

Yep.

Amanda Doyle:

It’s a for-profit business, the school security that puts on these drills.

Shannon Watts:

Yes. Yeah. Well-

Glennon Doyle:

Shannon, thank you. Thank you. Deep thank you for everything. I just want to make sure that the pod squad knows. We also tend to be a group of introverts who might be scared to attend these meetings. I will tell you that I have attended these meetings. If I can do it, you can do it. We talk a lot about how when we follow our heartbreak and our rage, we find our purpose and our people. And that is an interesting, very cool side thing that I have noticed about Moms Demand, is that, as we talk about a lot, there’s a really cool bond that happens among people who are doing the same world changing work. And it’s just plugging into your purpose, gives you this connection with these other people. And there’s a part of it that really does make you feel more alive and powerful and less hopeless and full of despair.

Shannon Watts:

Our volunteers tell us they join for two reasons. One, they believe we’re winning because they see it happening. And two, they meet their people. They meet the people they will be friends with for the rest of their lives.

Amanda Doyle:

Mm-hmm.

Glennon Doyle:

That’s right.

Amanda Doyle:

Also, there are plenty of opportunities for the introverts, like texting and things like that. So don’t be-

Glennon Doyle:

I mean, listen, you text to get involved.

Amanda Doyle:

If you’re still not extroverted, don’t worry, you could do it from your house.

Glennon Doyle:

It’s my kind of place. Shannon, thank you. Thank you, pod squad. Go text… One more time, can you tell us what we do? We text what to what?

Shannon Watts:

Text the word ready to 64433.

Glennon Doyle:

Text the word-

Amanda Doyle:

64433. Write R-E-A-D-Y. Ready, ready, ready.

Glennon Doyle:

All right. See you next time on We Can Do Hard Things. Thank you, Shannon.

Shannon Watts:

Thank you.