HOW EVERYTOWN GETS IT DONE

Everytown president John Feinblatt runs the largest gun violence prevention organization in America. He tells me how and why they are - wait for it! - winning.

The ever-growing army of Students Demand Action volunteers - many are running for school boards. Just wait until they can vote. (Picture from Everytown.org)

When you visit Everytown’s website, you are greeting by a rolling script: “We have a plan to end gun violence. One volunteer at a time. One donation at a time. One policy at a time. One survivor at a time. One statistic at a time. One law at a time.”

The work really is that incremental, that deliberate. For all the numbing, wearying tragedy of gun violence, Everytown has more powerful ammunition: deep strategy and extraordinary patience.

Recently, I saw Everytown President John Feinblatt interviewed by Rolling Stone’s Gus Wenner at an event at Electric Lady Studios in New York, and I was struck by his pragmatism, his cultural read, and the very real progress that Everytown has made since its forming in 2013.

It’s important that victories against gun violence are shared as often and as broadly as gun violence itself. I would love you all to read this interview, share it with people who are interested and, maybe, feel an unusual thing: optimism.

Thank you for the conversation, John.

John Feinblatt with Gus Wenner (courtesy Noel McGrath/Electric Lady Studios)

Laura Brown: Sadly, people can become fatigued by and inured to shooting posts and statistics, so I wanted to ask you how you work against this kind of cultural “wash.”

John Feinblatt: It’s funny that incrementalism is sort of a dirty word but that’s how you make progress on almost any issue.

LB: Have you always been a patient man?

JF: I think I'm generally, characterologically patient. I think of myself with my kids and I think they’d say I’m patient. I can get frustrated, but I understand the course that change takes.

LB: How would you categorize the pace of change with Everytown’s work?

JF: What I try to do is look at the arc of a movement. I compare this to the days after Sandy Hook, you know, 10-plus years ago, when 20 kids were murdered in a Connecticut schoolhouse, and six teachers and administrators were killed. Everybody in the country thought, well this was the moment. A very moderate background check bill was put on the Senate floor and was defeated with virtually every Republican voting against it and a handful of Democrats who also bowed to the power of the NRA at that time.

But just last June, we passed a bipartisan bill on gun safety in Congress, with every Democrat unified, and 15 Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn who was a lead negotiator. All over the vociferous objections of the NRA. What that says to me is that we've changed the political calculus and made this a bipartisan issue that both parties can get behind. And we have a weakened NRA that no longer treats the Congress like its clubhouse.

LB: We’ve just marked a year since the Highland Park shooting last July 4. I wanted to focus on two flanks of your strategy: litigation and people (from Moms Demand Action and Everytown) running for seats. Firstly, can you tell me about the lawsuit filed by Highland Park families against the gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson?

JF: One needs to step back and wonder why the gun industry hasn’t been the subject of litigation for so long. 18 years ago, when the NRA was at the height of its power, they convinced Congress to pass blanket civil immunity for the gun industry, and, truthfully, any other industry would be green with envy if they had those kinds of protections. Can you imagine, if you weren't allowed to sue car companies, cars would still be made of tin; if you weren't allowed to sue tobacco, every street corner you would see people smoking, and if you weren't allowed to sue pharmaceuticals, the Sackler family would still have their name on virtually every museum around the world.

Because of this, the gun industry has gotten away with murder, and about five years ago we created, within Everytown, a law firm called Everytown Law. It's got about 25 litigators who have figured out, in many instances, ways to sue the industry, even though they have these unprecedented legal protections. Highland Park is one of them, where we're suing based on [Smith & Wesson’s] marketing practices.
But there are some victories that are noteworthy already. We represented a Pakistani family [Adbul Aziz and Farah Naz] whose dream was to have their daughter Sabika graduate from a US high school. Sabika was killed in a school shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas in 2018. We sued an outfit called Lucky Gunner - one of the largest online ammunition dealers in the country - on the basis that they had broken the law by selling ammunition to a 17-year-old [the shooter], without any attempt to verify age, which is illegal. We were successful all the way up to the Texas Supreme Court which sided with the family. The lawsuit culminated in a settlement where Lucky Gunner is required to maintain an age verification system.

There's a suit that was just settled in California, where we were part of litigation team suing one of the largest manufacturers of ghost guns. It settled for $5 million but just as importantly, that company was banned from selling ghost guns in California. So, this is an ongoing effort, putting the industry on its heels.

LB: Can we be expecting lawsuits from families against gunmakers in other cities?

JF: Yes, there are lawsuits from the families in Uvalde, and shortly from other areas too. We also represent mayors, who feel the brunt of this. On behalf of the mayor of Kansas City Missouri, we sued a small gun manufacturer who was working with a gun trafficker and basically flooding the streets of Kansas City with illegal guns. We sued the manufacturer in Missouri, and they went into bankruptcy court. We ended up at auction, buying their whole inventory of guns, because we were concerned they would just reorganize under a different name. We had the guns destroyed.

LB: There is such a clear reward, being able to physically remove the guns.

JF: It was a very inventive move by our lawyers, and it was the right thing to do.

LB: What’s the greatest path that’s opened up for lawsuits?

JF: It’s suing manufacturers. One of the most creative things we've done is that our legislative team has gone into states, one after another, and made it easier to sue by specifying under what terms you could sue a gun manufacturer that fit within the exceptions to the blanket civil immunity.

LB: Incrementalism in 50 states! Let’s talk about your “Demand a Seat” program, which encourages gun violence survivors and volunteers to run for office.

JF: Over 180 Moms Demand volunteers have been elected to office. That’s what I’m most optimistic about. [According to Everytown, “during the 2021-2022 election cycle, more than 275 volunteers ran for office, and a record-breaking 158 volunteers won their races. 41% of them were first-time candidates or challengers.”]

LB: Tell me about the inception of the idea.

JF: It began with Lucy McBath, now a third term member of Congress, who was a Delta flight attendant in 2012 when her son Jordan Davis was killed in Florida for playing his music too loud. Lucy felt that volunteering with Moms Demand Action was probably one way that she could work through her grief. She left Delta, and we recognized very early on how talented a communicator she was. We hired her, and she eventually became our faith outreach leader. She called me up shortly after the Parkland mass shooting in 2018 and said, “John, you know, I've spent five years with you influencing and advocating for legislation, I'm now ready to write it.”

As she retells it, I sort of gulped, and she said, “Why are you hesitating?” And I said, “Well Lucy, I know where you live. You live in Newt Gingrich’s old district [in Georgia], and you’re going to have to try to unseat a Republican incumbent who is associated with both Trump and the NRA.” She basically said to me, “Stop gulping, I'm running.”

What was interesting is that committees who usually invest significantly in these kinds of congressional races (particularly if you could flip a seat from Republican to Democrat), none of them put in a penny. It’s not because they didn't think Lucy was great, they just didn't give her any odds. So, Everytown put in probably $4 million in independent expenditures to support her. In 2018, she goes into a three-way Democratic primary, and she wins. Then she unseats the Republican incumbent and flips the seat. That was really the impetus for us, and it showed so many of our volunteers what was possible.

LB: What did that celebration look like in Everytown-ville?

JF: You couldn't wipe the smiles off any of our faces. We began to think if Lucy can do it, why can't others do it? We thought about how to structure this, and we wanted to emphasize down ballot races because they have been so ignored by Democrats, but Republicans have known this forever.

LB: Yes, that’s how Republicans do it, they start right there and build.

JF: Yes, I always say that today’s school board member is tomorrow’s Marjorie Taylor Greene. That was our thought: not everybody is going to get elected to Congress like Lucy but school boards are important because issues of gun safety and arming teachers are being litigated all the time. Mayors are incredibly important as are city councils because they both deal with the issues of gun violence, and certainly state representatives.

LB: Can you give me some examples of how that has effected change?

JF: We elected enough people for the Minnesota Senate that it ended up flipping the Senate and giving the governor, who was a Democrat, a gun sense trifecta. And the same happened with Governor Whitmer in Michigan. What follows is legislation, which happened in both states. [In May, Whitmer signed legislation creating an Extreme Risk law, which allows for the temporary removal of firearms from people posing a risk to others or themselves]. 

LB: Michigan got more attention because Governor Whitmer signed legislation soon after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville.

JF: It felt rapid, but this was something Governor Whitmer had wanted to do, as had Governor Walz in Minnesota for years.

LB: What other states or areas are you ambitious for regarding volunteers being elected?

JF: Pennsylvania is an important state for us, Arizona too. Five Moms Demand Action volunteers just won their primaries in New York State.

LB: How do you prepare people to run?

JF: It’s rigorous. It’s a bootcamp, essentially, and it teaches people how to talk about gun safety. It’s sensitive to where they're running, so that you use the kind of language, understand the polling, understand your allies in the state that you're operating in. We connect people who want to run to people who have already gone through the process, and they become mentors. And of course, because we have over 10 million supporters through Mom's Demand Action and Students Demand Action, we have sort of a ready-made field team for anybody who wants to run.

LB: What are the demographics of that, because there are so many more engaged Gen Z’s, for example. Look at a Justin Pearson in Nashville, say, and other young folks starting to run.

JF: Yes, it’s diverse racially but we have a lot of young people running too and that's important for us. We’re giving young people the ability to become effective and civically engaged. Particularly, I encourage young people to run for their school board. I mean, we're talking about the first mass shooting generation. Who knows better about the role of guns in schools, and the damage guns in schools can have? The issues of arming teachers and the like is extraordinarily effective to get those voices in elective office.

LB: Do you remember when you first heard of this ridiculous notion of arming a teacher? What was your reaction?

JF: It is jaw dropping. The idea of having more guns in schools rather than less just feels like insanity. It essentially is communicating to students that we need to live in an armed society to be safe.

LB: The fact that there’s a term that exists called the “mass shooting generation” is unconscionable. [Texas Senator] Ted Cruz, for example, didn’t have people shooting up his high school, did he?

JF: Every generation has issues that are emotionally salient to them, experientially salient to them, and I think that this generation is the first mass shooting generation. It makes a difference in terms of motivating them to be active and it's why we're so proud of Students Demand Action, which is one of our fastest, growing grassroots efforts.

LB: How you feel about Nashville and Tennessee generally – any traction that might have been gained there?

JF: There’s a special session coming up in August, it will deal with the issue of guns. It's tough territory, and we’re going to be all in to see if we can pass a measure there. I've met with lots of people from Tennessee who are all concerned about this issue, realize the political landscape is conservative, particularly in the legislature, and we're going do what we can to see if we can pass something.

But I think the important part to keep in mind, and this takes me back to incrementalism. Whether we win or lose, we will be stronger. And that's what you always have to think about. There's an expression about that we use all the time: “losing forward.” We “lose forward” because consciousness has been raised about this issue. Political people have gotten off the sidelines and talked about this issue. There is a grassroots movement behind this issue, and it will make us stronger for the next legislative session.

Would I prefer to win? Yes. Do I know that we will be stronger one way or another? I’m absolutely convinced we will be.

To support the work of Everytown, visit everytown.org.

For more information on “Demand a Seat” visit everytown.org/demand-a-seat/