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Working to End Gun Violence in America | Shannon Watts

December 09, 2021

“I started this page because, as a mom, I can no longer sit on the sidelines.” Shannon Watts posted these words on Facebook the day after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, as she started the group that would become Moms Demand Action. As Watts would later recall in her book, Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World, she didn’t envision a future for herself as an activist at the time. “I was a former public relations executive and a mom who had never signed a petition or been to a single rally.”

Her Facebook page quickly grew into a nationwide movement of mothers and others united against the gun lobby in the United States. Today — with its partners, Everytown for Gun Safety and Students Demand Action — Moms Demand Action has more than 6 million supporters, surpassing the membership of the National Rifle Association.

In addition to her work with Moms Demand Action, Watts also serves on the boards of Emerge America, a group that recruits and trains women to run for office, and Advance Peace, an organization working to end gun violence in America’s urban communities.

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