TATTOOS AND TEARS: GROUP KEEPS UP FIGHT AGAINST GUN VIOLENCE
Moms Demand Action claims millions of supporters — ‘larger than the NRA’
WASHINGTON Yes, she did cry.
“I did. A little bit,” said Abbey Clements, dabbing under her eyes as she left the back room of the tattoo parlour, into a cheering crowd of middle-aged women crowding the lobby. “But not because it hurt. Because, well, because of everything. All of it, it’s like this is my battle scar.”
Because, as the artist was piercing her 50-year-old skin to write “One Tough Mother” on her back, Clements remembered the sound of 20 first-graders being slaughtered across the hall while she sang Christmas carols to her second-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary nearly seven years ago. And because her fear that this will keep happening was realized the very next day, when 31 people were killed and dozens were injured in two more mass shootings, this time in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
Clements was one of more than 2,000 gun-violence activists in Washington, D.C. for their annual meeting. They call themselves Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, and they are growing more powerful with each rampage.
On the night of Friday, Aug. 2, before the latest mass shootings, 56 of them left their conference rooms in a raucous and exhilarated pack to get tattoos signalling their warrior status in this movement. On the following night, hundreds of them left their annual gala to protest after word spread of the shooting in El Paso.
Welcome to the inner circle of the angry, fed-up and fired-up world of Moms Demand Action.
They are exhausted by the weekly stories of gun violence, the daily grind of drive-bys and lonely suicides, the public slaughters at offices, churches, synagogues, country concerts and garlic festivals. But they are ready for the fight.
They say they’re bigger than the National Rifle Association. And across the nation, they are quietly changing law after law, electing their approved candidates to county, state and national office, challenging the NRA’s infamous scorecard with their own scoring system to push candidates.
Over that first weekend in August, Washington was home to their below-the-radar boot camp, “GSU” — Gun Sense University. There were tattoos. And strategy meetings. And networking. A pyjama party. Wine. Tears.
They introduce each other as a gallery of collateral damage to America’s relentless gun violence epidemic:
“They lost their son in Pulse.” “She was there when Gabby Giffords was shot.”
“Her daughter was killed in Aurora.”
And they have witnesses to the daily carnage of gun violence on city streets and in lonely bedrooms.
“A family friend was killed while playing basketball.”
“Suicide. My brother.”
While they were deep into their breakout sessions, they received a vivid reminder of why they do what they do, as news of the shooting in El Paso lit up their phones. For the survivors of gun violence at GSU that weekend — there were about 700 in their group of 2,000 — the old trauma came back. For everyone else, the old anger came back.
Instead of their usual Saturday night gala, they ate a quick dinner and hit the streets, marching to the White House, then the Capitol, chanting “El Paso! El Paso!” and “Hey hey, ho ho, the NRA has got to go.”
“We’re now larger than the NRA,” said Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts . “And we’re seeing the needle move.”
Watts claims her group has six million supporters, though that number is impossible to verify. It includes anyone who has signed up for their programs or volunteered by marching, tabling, phone-banking, letter writing, organizing (or tattooing.)
Watts, a mother of five, started the group in 2012, after the massacre at Sandy Hook.
Modelled after MADD — Mothers Against Drunk Driving — Moms Demand Action supports the Second Amendment and woos gun owners. They want to pass common sense laws such as background checks and red-flag laws, while opposing laws that make it easier to carry guns on college campuses and other places.
“It’s like the changes in car deaths,” Watts said. “It’s seat belt laws. Airbags. Rumble strips. Speed limits.”
Martha Alguera, who barely escaped a street shooting in New Orleans days after Sandy Hook, started the group’s tattoo tradition at their gathering a couple years ago.
She was so fired up about mom power that she got a heart with “One Tough Mother” inked on her arm. The next year, a few more got the same one. The next year, they got a new one, “Disarm Hate.”
This year, dozens got tattoos. Some chose the signature heart. Others went with the group’s 2019 slogan. It reads: “Keep Going.” Washington Post