Shannon WattsVerified account

Since 2013, @MomsDemand and @StudentsDemant volunteers have passed nearly 400 gun safety laws, including: Background checks on all handgun gun sales in 21 states and DC; Extreme risk or red flag laws in 19 states and DC; Laws that disarm domestic abusers in 29 states and DC;

Laws that close the Charleston Loophole and give authorities more than three business days to complete a background check in 20 states and DC; Secure storage laws in 11 states, brining the total states with these laws to 23; Police accountability laws in 13 states since 2020.

And, every year for the last 6 years, @MomsDemand volunteers have defeated hundreds of NRA-backed bills in statehouses, giving us a win rate of 90% against the gun lobby. These bills include arming teachers, guns onto college campuses, Stand Your Ground, and permitless carry.

In 2016, after the NRA gave Donald Trump's campaign over $30 million, we stopped the gun lobby from passing their priority federal legislation - concealed carry reciprocity and deregulating silencers - despite a Republican President and Republican-led Congress for two years.

In 2018, we outspent the NRA in the midterm elections and elected over 1,000 gun sense candidates to office, including my @MomsDemand colleague, @lucymcbath. We also outmaneuvered them, flipping the make-up of the US House and seven state legislatures to be gun sense majorities.

As a result, in 2019 the US House passed the first major gun safety legislation in decades, including a bill requiring background checks on all gun sales, a bill to close the Charleston loophole, and a bill to fund $50 million to the CDC for gun violence prevention research.

In Virginia in 2019, we spent $2.5M, outspending the NRA 8 to 1 in their home state. We helped flip both chambers of the General Assembly, which then passed over a dozen gun safety laws, including background checks on all gun sales, a red flag law and secure storage requirements.

And working with our community partners, @MomsDemand and @StudentsDemand volunteers helped increase state and local budgets for violence intervention programs, unlocking over $200 million so far in government funding to programs like Project Longevity, Cure Violence and CalVIP.

And, because of @MomsDemand volunteers' work on BeSMART, TWO MILLION students across the country now live in a school district that's passed a resolution requiring schools to educate families about how to securely store their guns, in order to keep schools and students safe.

Leading up to the 2020 election, @MomsDemand and @StudentsDemand volunteers made over 3.7 MILLION voter calls and texts urging Americans to vote for gun sense candidates, and registered over 100,000 new voters — helping to elect nearly 1,300 Gun Sense Candidates to office.

While we keep fighting for the US Senate to act, the Biden-Harris Administration issued executive actions to prevent suicide by promoting secure gun storage - the first time the federal government featured secure storage of firearms as a focus of its suicide prevention efforts.

The administration also issue a five-part strategy to reduce gun violence that includes the creation of new strike forces to take on gun trafficking, and issued a proposed rule to stop the proliferation of deadly, untraceable ghost guns.

And the administration is pledging historic investments in community violence intervention programs, including $5 billion in the Build Back Better plan, which would be monumental in supporting community organizations' lifesaving work on the front lines of this epidemic.

Also in 2020, over 100 @MomsDemand volunteers ran for office up and down the ballot, and 43 of them won their races, including Congresswomen @lucymcbath and @RepMarieNewman. And over 30 volunteers won seats in statehouses in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and more.

And then in 2021, @momsdemand volunteers across the country helped elect 14 more of our own volunteers to office, including @AftabPureval, the new mayor of Cincinnati. #DemandASeat

Along the way, we've also convinced businesses to do the right thing. After the mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso, over 40 major grocery store brands - including Albertsons Companies, ALDI, CVS, Kroger, Meijer, Publix, Wegmans, Walgreens and Walmart - restricted open carry.

Today, we're not just moms - we're mothers and others, students and survivors. There's a @MomsDemand chapter in every single state and over 700 local groups across the country. And @StudentsDemand now has 400+ chapters in high schools and on college campuses across the US.

Meanwhile, thanks to @momsdemand volunteers' belief that sunlight is the best disinfectant, the NRA is in crisis and losing its grip on political power amid infighting, investigations, and allegations of millions of dollars in self-dealing and lavish spending by its executives.