I had a healthy appreciation for the political damage the NRA could do. I’d seen it before and expected worse this time. But I also knew that a lot of swing voters, especially women, were as horrified by gun violence as I was, and were open to smart solutions that would keep their families and communities safer. So I shook off the threats and got to work.
My team and I collaborated with gun safety advocates such as the organization Moms Demand Action to develop new proposals for keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and other violent criminals. I called for universal background checks, barring anyone on the terrorist no-fly list from buying a gun, and giving survivors and families the right to hold gun makers and sellers accountable. For example, I believed that families who lost children in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, should be able to sue Remington Arms for marketing its AR-15 assault rifle to civilians. It infuriated me that a special law gave gun manufacturers immunity from such suits.
After the massacre of nine parishioners at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015, my team focused on why the twenty-one-year-old white supremacist killer was able to buy a gun despite having an arrest record that should have been flagged by the required background check. We found that, under current law, if a background check is not completed after three days, a store is free to sell a gun with no questions asked. This is the result of an amendment the NRA designed and pushed through Congress during the debate over the Brady Bill in 1993. Experts say that more than fifty-five thousand gun sales that should have been blocked have been allowed to proceed because of what we started calling the “Charleston loophole.” I made closing it and other gun loopholes a major part of my campaign.
Listening to the Mothers’ stories in Chicago, I was more sure than ever that taking on the gun lobby was the right thing to do, whatever the cost. I told them about some of the reforms that my policy team had been working on, and asked them to stay in touch with us and not be shy about sending ideas and criticisms. I said how much hearing their stories meant to me and how determined I was to be their champion. I’m sure my words failed me, but it was hard to express how honored I felt by their willingness to open up so completely with me. “We’re better than this, and we need to act like we are,” I said.
As our meeting broke up, the Mothers started talking intensely among themselves. Soon they were taking photos and making plans. Many of them had never met before, but they were already bonding like sisters. I saw how powerful they were together. Later, when they decided to go on the road for my campaign, traveling around South Carolina and other early primary states to speak on my behalf, I was moved and grateful. The Mothers of the Movement were born.
Over the months that followed, I always looked forward to running into the Mothers out on the trail. On hard days, a hug or smile from them would give me an extra boost. And I made a point to be upbeat around them. I figured there was enough sadness in their lives, so the least I could do was to be cheerful with them.
But it wasn’t easy. New tragedies kept unfolding. In July 2016 a black man named Philando Castile was shot seven times during a traffic stop in the Twin Cities, while his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her four-year-old daughter sat in the car. Later, video showed the little girl pleading with her mother to stay quiet so she wouldn’t be killed as well. “I don’t want you to get shooted,” she said. “Okay, give me a kiss,” Diamond responded. “I can keep you safe,” her tiny daughter assured her, before starting to cry. Two weeks later, I met with the grieving family in Minnesota and heard about how beloved Castile was in the community, including at the magnet school in Saint Paul where he worked, and that he and Diamond had planned to get married.
That same month, five police officers were ambushed and killed by a sniper in Dallas while protecting a peaceful protest march. I was horrified by the news and quickly canceled an event I had been planning to do with Joe Biden in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It didn’t feel right to go to a campaign rally on the day after such a tragedy. Instead, I went to a conference of ministers in Philadelphia and paid tribute to the fallen officers and offered prayers for their families. I called Mayor Mike Rawlings and offered my support. Dallas Police Chief David Brown urged Americans to stand with the brave men and women who risk their lives to keep the rest of us safe. “We don’t feel much support most days. Let’s not make today most days,” he said. I agreed completely. Less than two weeks later, another three officers were ambushed and killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And as I’m writing this, a New York City police officer, a mother of three, was gunned down in cold blood. This violence—against police, against young black men and women, against anyone—must stop.
Since the election, I’ve often thought about my time with the Mothers of the Movement. Whenever I’ve started to feel sorry for myself, I’ve tried to remember how these mothers persevered through infinitely harder circumstances. They’re still doing everything they can to make our country a better place. If they can, so can I and so can we all.
I think about how I felt standing with them in a prayer circle, like we did at the Trayvon Martin Foundation’s annual dinner in Florida. Eight of us leaning our heads together, clasping hands, looking downward in contemplation. One of the Mothers led us in prayer, her voice rising and falling as she thanked God for making all things possible.
I remember something Gwen Carr said on our visit to the Central Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina. In the first days after losing her son, Eric, she couldn’t even get out of bed. But then, she said, “The Lord talked to me and told me, ‘Are you going to lay here and die like your son, or are you going to get up and uplift his name?’ ” She realized in that moment that none of us can rest as long as there are others out there to be helped. She said, “I had to turn my sorrow into a strategy, my mourning into a movement.”
Guns became a flash point in both the primaries and the general election. Bernie Sanders, who loved to talk about how “true progressives” never bow to political realities or powerful interests, had long bowed to the political reality of his rural state of Vermont and supported the NRA’s key priorities, including voting against the Brady Bill five times in the 1990s. In 2005, he voted for that special immunity law that protects gun makers and sellers from being sued when their weapons are used in deadly attacks. The NRA said the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was the most important gun-related legislation in more than twenty years. Then-Senator Barack Obama and I had voted against it. I couldn’t believe Bernie continued to support the law ten years later when he ran for President.
I hammered him on the issue every chance I got. We had a revealing exchange in a town hall debate in March 2016. A man stepped up to the microphone to ask a question. His fourteen-year-old daughter had been shot in the head during a shooting spree outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant. After a few scary days on life support, she pulled through and ended up being the lone survivor of the attack. The father asked what we were going to do to address the epidemic of gun violence stalking our country.
“I am looking at your daughter, and I’m very grateful that she is laughing and she is on a road to recovery,” I said. “But it never should have happened.” I told him about some of the steps I wanted to take to keep families safe, including repealing the immunity protection for gun manufacturers. The moderator then asked Bernie his thoughts about a new lawsuit challenging that corporate immunity. To my surprise, the Senator doubled down. He argued passionately that people like me who talked about suing gun makers were really talking about “ending gun manufacturing in America.” To him, the idea that a manufacturer could be held liable for what happens with its guns was tantamount to saying that “there should not be any guns in America.” I couldn’t have disagreed more strongly. No other industry in our country has the kind of protection he supported for gun manufacturers. And in every other situation, he was the loudest voice in the room calling for corporations to be held accountable for their actions. Why was this one issue so different? As I told the crowd, it was like he was reading straight from the NRA’s talking points. After months of pressure from activists and victims’ families, Bernie finally said he would reconsider his vote.