The first was that these other groups had outside sources of institutional support. I sort of came up with three differences – maybe the magic formula that these other movements had discovered that the gun control groups had not. I compared the gun control groups to a number of other groups that, to my eye, had developed really strong movements and were at the same time trying to sort of regulate individual freedom around the edges in the interests of some public good. Why, historically, has the gun control movement been weak? And I was interested in exploring the weakness on the gun control side. So, if you want to know why one team wins a lot it could because that team is really good, but it could also be that their opponents are weak. And I certainly do not dispute that the NRA is an incredibly powerful political organization. So, after Columbine I thought it would be interesting to take a more thorough look at the state of what then was called the “gun control movement” now called “the gun violence prevention movement.”Īnd it struck me that there was an easy answer to why the gun control movement was weak and that was that their opponents, namely the National Rifle Association, was so strong.
So, that book came out of a mass shooting, one that was especially deadly and especially shocking at the time, which was the shooting at Columbine High School in my hometown of Denver Colorado.Īnd it occurred to me at the time – I had done some work earlier on gun violence in urban areas, we were coming off a national epidemic of gun violence largely in urban areas and I had been looking at sort of grassroots efforts by moms and very small volunteer groups to try to stem the tide, and had noticed that they were really under resourced and really struggling. Why write a book on the missing movement for gun control in America? The Missing Gun Control Movement Conversation Highlights.
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