Here’s why (and how) we’re demanding a safer future for our families.
We’ve seen extremist lawmakers worship assault weapons with an almost religious fervor recently, posing with them in Christmas cards, plastering them all over social media, and even sickeningly attempting to make the AR-15 America’s “national gun.” Posting a photo of yourself brandishing a military-style rifle while surrounded by your family members has become a sort of political shorthand for the far-right — a way to say I’m willing to put guns first, all the time, every time.
But angry mothers in America have a clear message in the wake of so many shooting tragedies: Our children’s lives matter more than your assault rifle, and we’ll continue to do what it takes to get these weapons of war out of our communities. That’s why we’re organizing a nationwide Mother’s Day of Action on May 13 to demand that members of Congress act with the urgency and courage this issue demands — and reinstate the 1994 bipartisan ban on assault weapons.
We’ve already pushed states across the country to take action. Governor Jay Inslee recently made Washington the tenth state to ban assault weapons, joining Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, and Washington, DC. It was fitting that the governor signed the bill into law surrounded by gun violence survivors and volunteers from Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action whose tireless advocacy made it happen.
State-level restrictions on these military-style weapons — including three passed in the last year alone after a 10-year gap — are the result of our relentless grassroots organizing. We’ve worked around the clock over the past decade to overcome the gun industry’s staggering callousness and politicians’ flagrant indifference and keep these weapons — designed for the battlefield — out of our schools, malls, and churches.
It’s a strategy we’ve honed over 10 years of advocacy: When Congress fails to act, we rack up life-saving legislative wins at the state and local levels, paving the way for eventual federal action. Together, we’ve passed hundreds of strong state-level gun safety laws and beat the NRA in statehouses 90 percent of the time for eight years running.
But we’re only as safe as the state with the weakest gun laws. It’s time for federal action on assault weapons. Why? Because an AR-15 shouldn’t be more sacred than the life of a 15-year-old. These weapons were designed to be used by highly trained soldiers in battle, not marketed to lonely, angry men to carry out violent revenge fantasies.
We’re only a third of the way through 2023, but there have already been at least 172 mass shootings (defined as any incident in which four or more people are shot and wounded or killed, excluding the shooter). More than 13,000 Americans have been shot and killed this year, including more than 540 children. Another 10,000 people have been shot and wounded. And community after community is left mourning in the uniquely American hell the gun industry has created by selling ever-deadlier guns to as many people as possible and then encouraging them to shoot first and ask questions later.
To be clear, action on assault weapons is just one part of the holistic strategy that’s needed to address a crisis that kills 120 Americans and wounds more than 200 others every single day. Mass shootings are horrific, but they represent less than 1 percent of gun deaths. This is why we also need background checks on all gun sales, laws that disarm domestic abusers, red flag laws, secure storage laws, and funding for life-saving community violence intervention programs working on the ground.
But even though not every shooting involves an assault weapon, banning them will make a huge difference in our ability to save lives. From Newtown to Nashville, Las Vegas to Uvalde, we’ve seen time and again that assault-style rifles are the weapons of choice for those who want to inflict as much harm as quickly as possible.
In fact, from 2015 to 2022, mass shootings where assault weapons were used resulted in more than twice as many people killed and 20 times as many people wounded per incident, on average. Additionally, since 2015, eight of the deadliest mass shooting incidents all involved the use of an assault weapon and a firearm equipped with a high-capacity magazine.
We also know these laws work. When there was a bipartisan-supported ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines from 1994 to 2004, mass shooting fatalities were 70 percent less likely to occur than during the 12 years before and after, a 2019 study found. Lawmakers can save lives again by reinstating the national ban on assault weapons now.
Of course, it will take more than one policy to address America’s gun violence epidemic. In fact, one thing I’ve learned in my own journey from stay-at-home mom to full-time volunteer advocate is that our culture often views activism as something that burns hot and quick. We want to believe that one Facebook post, one protest, one policy will solve it all.
But those of us who have been in the trenches of this fight for a decade or more know that it’s our steady and unyielding presence that results in real change. We’ve spent 10 years building a grassroots movement twice as large as the NRA — and far more powerful. We elected the strongest gun sense presidential administration in history and broke the 30-year logjam in Congress to pass the strongest federal gun safety legislation in a generation with bipartisan support.
We’re now up to 10 states and Washington, D.C., with bans on assault weapons because of our sustained advocacy, and we’ll keep fighting until every community in America has one. Because the value of our children’s lives will always be greater than the value of an AR-15, and mothers never give up. Text FEDUP to 644-33 to join our Mother’s Day of Action and demand a safer future for our families.
Shannon Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action and the author of Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World.
