Gun Control: Don't Mess With Mom!

Moms Demand Action started in December 2012, after 20 first-graders were shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Shannon Watts, a mother of five in Indianapolis, channeled her outreach and grief into a call for action. She told Mother Jones, “I started this page because, as a mom, I can no longer sit on the sidelines. I am too sad and too angry.”

Moms Demand Action has quickly become one of the most far-reaching organizations, with nearly 5 million people who’ve signed up and 300,000 active volunteers. By Watts’ count, volunteers with Moms Demand Action have helped kill 90 percent of NRA-backed bills and passed 1,000 bills of their own. They show up for every hearing on gun laws, inform other activists on social media and have launched chapters in most states, from Virginia to Kentucky. In this interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast, Watts shares her goals.

She has modeled her group after the pioneering campaign for Mothers Against Drunk Drivers: I'm proud to call Cindi Lamb, one of MADD's co-founders, my friend since I interviewed her for my book Bouncing Forward. Cindi's daughter Laura was only five months old when a drunk driver crashed into Cindi's truck head-on, leaving Laura paralyzed from the waist down and turning her into the world's youngest quadriplegic. Despite her own injuries and the challenge of caring for Laura as a single mom, Cindi banded together with Candy Lightner, who had lost her teenage daughter in a drunk-driving crash, to launch MADD. Within five years, MADD grew to 600,000 volunteers and became America’s favorite charity.

MADD’s activists were instrumental in lowering the legal blood alcohol content, convicting drunk drivers, and changing the cultural paradigm. Cindi estimates that changes initiated by MADD saved 250,000 to 300,000 lives. Ultimately, Cindi couldn’t save her daughter, but she helped save thousands of others.

Can Moms Demand Action do to gun extremists what MADD did to drunk drivers?