folks white folks rich folks, poor folks who are paying attention to the epidemic and the bad policies, is going to create positive change our country. shannon watts, would you say to people who don t understand the disconnect between at the policies that are passed and what the public actually wants? when you have conversations about this with every day americans, with your family and friends, you realize that you have more in common than you don t on this issue. it is these gun extremists that we ve elected to state legislatures or even in congress who are standing in the way of global movements. i want to be clear, we are making huge progress on this issue. we have passed over 500 new gun laws in the last decade, we stop the nra 90% of the year for the last eight years in a row, we are educating people about secure gun storage, changing this issue legislatively, electorally, and culturally. in fact 100 of her own volunteers ran for
homicide rate than any peer nation. so you ask about the momentum, and i have been doing this as a volunteer and last summer we passed the first federal gun laws in a generation. there is momentum in this country for stronger gun laws and there are some gun extremists elected to office who are standing in the way, but i am confident as i get ready to go into the election cycle that this issue is top of mind for every parent in this country regardless of the political party, and we have to vote out those lawmakers who are refusing to stand up to the gun lobbyists and making the children stand up to gunmen. shannon, you are raising an important point that if a good guy stops bad guy with the gun, and when is the country going to be safer, because it does not appear that the guns are making us safer at the clip that the shootings are happening. i wanted to point out that
logical outcome of unfettered access to guns and too few gun law, and i wanted to be clear that the gun laws work. data shows it. when you are looking at the states that pass stronger gun laws and we have done that in recent weeks in places like michigan and delaware and illinois and soon to be in minnesota, and washington state just passed the assault weapons ban, and so we know they work, and when we are looking at the red states like gun extremists elected to office, and weaken the gun laws on behalf of the gun lobby, we will see more gun violence and gun death, and that is intuitive but the data is going to bear it out. so we need the law at the federal level and until then, we will go school board by school board and city council by city council and statehouse by statehouse. shannon, i am interested in your perspective of the kind of person who is buying the weapons is changing and becoming younger
washington is going to fix this problem? you re wrong. they re not going to fix this problem. they are the problem. the laws don t work until people change their hearts were not going to see a change. what did you think? when you saw that? that we need to get these people out of office right now. we need to get out and voting and we need to run people against them. and on top of that, he there is a kernel of truth. and but he said, this is not going to change in congress in the first place. this is going to have to come from our state legislatures, young people, old people, people, all ages need to show up every single year. not just after a parkland not just after nashville or you baldy but show up before the next part center in nashville at your state legislature every single year and be just as angry as the gun extremists art that s the birth of majority will of the american people that say that we want our kids to be protected and safe at schools, because when we don t show up, tho
well in the midterm elections and elected gun-sense majorities in places like minnesota. we now have trifectas in maryland and massachusetts. we can go into michigan this year and pass stronger gun laws as well. and so we re making incredible progress. there are some red states like you mentioned where gun extremists, which is a small minority in this country most gun owners and republicans actually support things like a background check on every gun sale but there are gun extremists in the legislatures in red states, and they are doing the gun lobby s bidding. they re passing things like permanent list carry, which allow people to bring a handgun in public with no background check and no training. data shows, this is intuitive, that that increases gun crime and death. in the blue states where we ve made progress and pass stronger gun laws, we ve seen less gun death and less gun violence. again, this doesn t take a rocket scientist. the data bears out what is