A Grassroots Effort For Gun Safety?

Above: A Moms Demand Action advertisement and grassroots campaign from 2016, highlighting the irony of what is permissible to carry inside a Kroger supermarket.

It is problematic that I'm not more emotional about the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas or racially-motivated shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Perhaps I've become too numb, having lived in a town next to Parkland and grown up in a town near Newtown. I also lived in Orlando years ago, only about five miles from the location of the Pulse nightclub. But, I'm a marketer, too, and most of the posts and news that I'm seeing after each incident feel like the same old arguments - which have not gotten us anywhere in the past, so I don't expect them to get us anywhere in the future. I also live in a red county, so have a deeper understanding of how conservatives think than many of my liberal friends in the Northeast or West Coast. As a marketer, I naturally I think about the strategies and the tactics of the movement, and around the messaging and the communication, too. For several years, I was a judge at the North American Effie awards (like the Academy Awards for marketing and advertising), and one year we awarded Moms Demand Action very high scores for an effective campaign that leveraged some lessons from the anti-smoking campaign, so I have a few suggestions for all of us who are looking to try to create change that hopefully can make a difference in helping to prevent more mass shootings. Yes, vote. Yes, write/call your legislators. But here are a few others. 1) Stop calling it gun control. Republicans don't want Democrats to control anything, let alone legislate on something they believe is a constitutional right. Let's call it "child safety". Or "gun safety". Something that reframes it a bit into what we're really trying to do. 2) If we can't win legislatively, where can we win? Taking from the playbook of the anti-smoking campaign, how do we make it very inconvenient for gun owners to go places with guns? What businesses (see the Moms Demand Action ads that targeted Kroger) allow open carry? Can you publicize your disappointment about any business that does allow open carry - and get friends to boycott any businesses that allow guns inside (e.g., stores, restaurants, etc)? Can you ask stores that do not allow guns inside to post signs stating so? Moms Demand Action was able to get a grocery chain to not allow open carry in their stores... how do we take this to the next level? The truth is, businesses will only change if there is an impact to their bottom line. Beyond the businesses that sell guns, where can we make it very inconvenient (or against store policy) for anyone to carry a gun? I know that this is not what we are all collectively seeking, but I think we need to think differently to realize the change we wish to see. Businesses will act when it hurts their bottom line. Making it inconvenient for people to carry guns anywhere (just as it was for people to smoke inside of buildings) is a small but meaningful start. We know we can't rely on our legislators here, but as grassroots organizers we could create some tangible change.