Thu 9/7 @ 6:30PM
That the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, New Jersey in which 20 first graders, along with six faculty and staff, were killed, didn’t cause a wave of outrage sufficient to make major changes in U.S. gun laws was discouraging and revealed the true ugliness of the gun lobby. Just recently, guns became the #1 killer of kids in the U.S.
But Newtown also triggered a new wave of gun safety activism that hopefully one day WILL bear fruit. One of those was the formation of a now-prominent national advocacy group called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense by Shannon Watts. She wasn’t an experienced activist; she was merely outraged. The group was initially a Facebook group but it grew quickly as more outraged people, moms and non-moms, joined and in 2014 it joined with Mayors Against Illegal Guns to form the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety.
In 2019, Watts wrote Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World, in which she talks about hr own awakening to activism and advocates for the ability of ordinary citizens to make change.
She will be at the Hudson Library and Historical Society — in person! — to speak in a conversation hosted by Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler. Sadly, there never seems to be a time anymore when such a conversation isn’t timely.
It’s free but registration is required. Go here. Books will be available at the event for purchase and signing, thanks to Hudson’s Learned Owl Book Shop.