What I've learned as a mom and gun violence prevention activist
Finding common ground and staying hopeful
Ms. Downes is a gun violence prevention activist.
Like many fellow Moms, I began my activism in gun violence prevention after a mass shooting.
In December 2012, I stood in a Home Depot with my 7-month-old in my arms and my 4 year-old in the shopping cart. Then my phone buzzed. And I found out that a group of first graders — babies like my own — had been murdered in a small school in Newtown, Connecticut, an hour and a half drive from my New Jersey home. Their teachers and principal were also violently killed, trying to protect the kids.
At first, I was numb. Honestly, I don’t remember processing more than the initial facts and holding my kids a little tighter. Maybe it’s a type of self-protection, to not take it in all at once. Of course, that’s a luxury the parents of the slaughtered children never had.
Even though I shut down that day, I started paying more attention. A few years later, I heard a woman in a red shirt, a mom like me, speak at a gun violence vigil. Politicians and other VIPs also spoke. But her words, the anger through her sadness, moved me most. I later learned her name was Lauren O’Brien, and that she was the head of Moms Demand Action in Union County, New Jersey. I started going down to Union County every time I could get a babysitter to attend meetings, canvass, or anything like that.
In late 2016, Lauren kicked me out of Union County’s Moms Demand Action chapter in the nicest way possible. “Larisa, we love you, but we’re going to need a local group in Bergen County, get outta here,” she told me. And so together with Lisa Cullen, another volunteer who’d also been making the drive down to Union, we founded the Bergen County local group of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
Lisa and I organized many meetings, most of them poorly attended at first. We spoke with anyone who would listen: sheriffs, PTA reps, and others. We’d often start these conversations by trying to establish common ground with one of Moms’ best programs, Be SMART. I call Be SMART the “gateway drug” to gun violence prevention because it establishes a low floor of agreement: we want our kids to grow up safely.
Be SMART doesn’t judge whether you’re a gun owner or argue for any particular gun control policy. All it does is educate people on safe gun storage. Unintentional shootings kill hundreds of children each year. It’s tragic and entirely preventable. An apt tag line for most gun violence in the United States.
One of my first Be SMART presentations was at a local library. I didn’t realize until I drove up that they’d billed the event as “A Gun Safety Presentation.” My stomach clenched as I pulled up behind a pick-up truck bearing an NRA sticker. It turned out that an entire rifle club had shown up for our “gun safety” lecture.
These days, I rarely get nervous about presentations, partly from practice, and partly because I’m confident I can counter the misinformation that surrounds gun violence in America. But I was nervous that day. Our sister groups in places like Michigan and Virginia often face audience members with guns. And while open carry isn’t a thing in New Jersey yet, that NRA sticker made me think we’d at least be verbally attacked or mocked.
But then I went through the presentation and a mom whose child had died by suicide spoke. Her son had used her ex-husband’s unsecured guns to end his life. Afterwards, the owners of those trucks approached the survivor and myself. They didn’t mock us. They thanked us, saying that they’d found it a good and useful presentation. Safe gun storage was something we all could agree on.
We shouldn’t just focus on the areas we agree on. To truly protect our kids, we have to pass common-sense gun legislation. But that library presentation stays with me when I feel despair or get bogged down in bad news. It reminds me that as an activist, you often go into situations expecting one thing and come out with an entirely different perspective. It reminds me that as an activist, you can reach people you thought might entirely dismiss your message.
Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, recently said in a speech that “Hope is a discipline.” And as a runner – well, let me get real here, as a jogger – that really resonated. You don’t get up and jog a half-marathon after being sedentary for years. It’s a process. You get to one mile, then to three, eventually to seven and eight and up from there. And it’s going to hurt occasionally. Some days will be better than others. But you’ll get there.
It’s the same with gun violence prevention. If I give up, if other Moms stop the work, then nothing will get done. But if we continue, chances are we’ll keep moving the needle.
This past June, for the first time in 26 years, Congress passed meaningful gun violence prevention legislation. Among other steps, the legislation closed the “boyfriend loophole,” which had previously let domestic abusers obtain a firearm even if they had a restraining order unless the partnership was a marriage, the couple cohabitated, or had a child together. In other words, if it was “just a boyfriend” who was being abusive, the law couldn’t, in many instances, keep them from getting a gun.
Was the legislation everything we wanted? No. Will it make a difference? Yes. And that’s why I keep at it.
For those kids and teachers at Sandy Hook. For the teenagers at my alma mater, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who were murdered in 2018. For the over 40,000 killed every year who don’t always make the headlines. For my children and for yours. So that we create a world where we never again receive a notification about another tragic and preventable shooting.
Larisa Mendez Downes is in public advocacy for a major non-profit. She began her work in advocacy and activism with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and continues to work in local politics and for other causes throughout her community. When not trying to save the world in spite of itself, she enjoys jogging, spending time with her two kids, and with her two pit bull mixes.