livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
I’ve spent 18 years fighting for gun control. Here’s how we win
Eighteen years ago I applied for a permit to march on Washington, called it the “Million Mom March,” and scheduled the protest for Mother’s Day 2000. More than 750,000 protestors turned out on the National Mall. Another 250,000 poured into sister marches across the country. This spring, the March for Our Lives surpassed those numbers. It was a promising sign that the gun control movement is finally regaining momentum after failing miserably to keep Americans safe.
We’ve failed for a few reasons, but here’s a big one: Each successive wave of activists failed to internalize and build upon their predecessors’ wins. That’s resulted in (among other things) a long history of disastrous branding.
If the generation of reformers inspired by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High is going to succeed in passing meaningful gun control legislation, it will need to follow the lead of the school’s namesake–by keeping at it and never giving up. A tenacious suffragist and lifelong conservationist, Stoneman Douglas was at the White House when Bill Clinton signed the landmark Brady Bill in 1993, seven long years after activists like her began fighting for it. Indeed, if the gun control movement’s history tells us anything, it’s that women–and especially mothers–have the tenacity it takes to win real victories over the long term. The post-Parkland generation will need to craft a durable brand that includes them.
Shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, in April 1999, I searched online for an organization dedicated to protecting my children, then ages 4 and 5, from gun violence. What I found was a badly branded mess known variously as the “gun control,” “gun reform,” “gun safety,” “gun sense,” and “gun violence prevention” (GVP) movement. Whatever you called it, none of the organizations under that many-named banner had the funding or visibility of their nemesis, the National Rifle Association (NRA), a well-known brand since 1871. Even worse, none seemed eager to attract the demographic most likely to support gun control: women
More at...
I’ve spent 18 years fighting for gun control. Here’s how we win
Eighteen years ago I applied for a permit to march on Washington, called it the “Million Mom March,” and scheduled the protest for Mother’s Day 2000. More than 750,000 protestors turned out on the National Mall. Another 250,000 poured into sister marches across the country. This spring, the March for Our Lives surpassed those numbers. It was a promising sign that the gun control movement is finally regaining momentum after failing miserably to keep Americans safe.
We’ve failed for a few reasons, but here’s a big one: Each successive wave of activists failed to internalize and build upon their predecessors’ wins. That’s resulted in (among other things) a long history of disastrous branding.
If the generation of reformers inspired by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High is going to succeed in passing meaningful gun control legislation, it will need to follow the lead of the school’s namesake–by keeping at it and never giving up. A tenacious suffragist and lifelong conservationist, Stoneman Douglas was at the White House when Bill Clinton signed the landmark Brady Bill in 1993, seven long years after activists like her began fighting for it. Indeed, if the gun control movement’s history tells us anything, it’s that women–and especially mothers–have the tenacity it takes to win real victories over the long term. The post-Parkland generation will need to craft a durable brand that includes them.
Shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, in April 1999, I searched online for an organization dedicated to protecting my children, then ages 4 and 5, from gun violence. What I found was a badly branded mess known variously as the “gun control,” “gun reform,” “gun safety,” “gun sense,” and “gun violence prevention” (GVP) movement. Whatever you called it, none of the organizations under that many-named banner had the funding or visibility of their nemesis, the National Rifle Association (NRA), a well-known brand since 1871. Even worse, none seemed eager to attract the demographic most likely to support gun control: women
More at...
I’ve spent 18 years fighting for gun control. Here’s how we win
