State Lawmakers Have A New Strategy For Gun Reform

A group of state legislators, local politicians and nonprofits on Tuesday launched a national coalition that hopes to circumvent the congressional stalemate on gun reform by pressing for violence prevention efforts at the local level.

The coalition, Legislators for Safer Communities, aims to capitalize on the shifting politics of gun reform by focusing more attention on state legislatures, where violence prevention advocates have scored their biggest wins in recent years.

Part incubator of best practices and part national coordination committee, the coalition strives to rack up more wins while strategizing how to tailor policy goals to local realities. It supports ambitious but politically challenging reforms like banning assault-style weapons and mandating universal background checks for firearm purchases, but also sees opportunities to push lighter-lift measures that typically get less attention, like safe gun storage laws and funding community violence intervention programs.

Some of the country’s most prominent reform groups — such as Brady, Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence, and March for Our Lives — have partnered with the coalition. It features 171 legislators from 43 states across the country, including some gun owners and lawmakers from conservative-leaning states where reform remains a contentious subject.

The coalition, which bills itself as nonpartisan but as of Tuesday included only Democratic politicians, views that broad exposure to varied political environments as a major strength.

“Each member of this organization is thinking about how to draw in these practices that other states have already deployed and start saving more lives,” Illinois state Rep. Bob Morgan told HuffPost. “The genius of this new organization is the inclusion of what has been the most successful gun violence prevention strategies across the nation, while also considering the unique political realities of each state — whether it’s red or blue.”

Morgan noted at a virtual press conference Tuesday that while Texas is known for political resistance to reform, the state’s school districts distribute educational information on safe firearm storage in an effort to protect children.

“Every state can learn from some other state,” Morgan said. “That’s the beauty of what we’re doing here.”

State legislatures have emerged as gun reformers’ most hospitable venues over the last two decades. Headline-grabbing mass shootings, a historically high rate of gun deaths by suicide, and gun violence becoming the top killer of U.S. children and teenagers have prompted far more aggressive legislation at the local level compared with the federal level, especially in Democratic-led states.

But relatively conservative legislatures have also taken a tougher stance on gun violence in the aftermath of major mass shootings.

Florida state Rep. Christine Hunschofsky served as the mayor of Parkland in 2018, when a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School left 17 dead and 17 others injured. The incident drove support in Florida for the passage of a gun safety bill with a red flag provision, which can temporarily restrict a person’s ability to possess firearms if they present a threat to themselves or others.

Florida conservatives, including law enforcement officials, often viewed so-called risk protection orders with suspicion at the time, Hunschofsky said.

But seeing the legislation in action has turned former critics into proponents, she said, with the law being used thousands of times since its passage.

“They’ve seen it work in the communities and can now be trusted messengers to talk to conservative people in conservative states about how they’ve had a positive impact in keeping our communities safe,” Hunschofsky told HuffPost.

This type of experience has led Hunschofsky to believe there’s more room for reform than conventional wisdom might suggest.

“The goal is to have the best practice for wherever you live and what’s possible for where you live,” she said. “Sometimes people will look at Texas or Florida and say, ‘You can’t do anything there’ — and that’s not true. You might not be able to do the same things there that you can do in Illinois, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.”

Like Hunschofsky, several other members of Legislators for Safer Communities know from personal experience how severely gun violence impacts Americans.

Nevada state Assembly Member Sandra Jauregui attended the 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas, where a gunman fired more than 1,000 rounds — leaving 60 dead and hundreds of others injured.

“What we are all trying to do is enact policies that are proven to prevent gun violence,” Jauregui said. “We’re all looking at the policies that are going to have the most impact.”

Washington state Rep. Liz Berry, a co-chair of Legislators for Safer Communities, worked for then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) in 2011 when Giffords and more than a dozen others were shot outside Tucson, Arizona. Six people died, including Berry’s friend and fellow staffer Gabe Zimmerman.

“Because of the gridlock in D.C., we’re the ones stepping up, passing really big pieces of policy,” Berry said. “It’s where the action is. You’re going to see more progress and more exciting things happen at the state level.”