Barack Obama announced on Tuesday that he would use his executive powers to do what he can to make gun violence prevention a priority of his final year in office – expanding background checks to gun shows and online sales, encouraging smart gun technology and requiring sellers to notify law enforcement if shipped guns are stolen or lost in transit.



Executive actions are not ideal substitutes for lawmaking; a Republican president would undoubtedly reverse these actions on his first week in office. Obama’s renewed focus is a welcome step in the larger struggle for gun responsibility, but the campaign to reduce gun violence is not going to be won from the top down – it’s going to be won from the bottom up, voter by voter, city by city and state by state.



As a veteran of other seemingly intractable issue campaigns, I base this prediction on compelling evidence: we’ve already won a national debate using similar tactics in the last decade.

In 2012, I ran Washington state’s successful same-sex marriage referendum, a movement built on the efforts of activists around the nation. We learned from their mistakes and their triumphs, and other campaigns around the country took lessons from our successes and failures.

We couldn’t have gotten to the landmark US supreme court decision legalizing gay marriage last year without the victories in Massachusetts, the setbacks in California and 2012’s historic victories at the polls in Washington, Maryland, Maine and Minnesota – a local groundswell became national law of the land. And I believe that we are seeing an embryonic version of this same successful strategy in the gun responsibility movement right now.

That’s why I was so excited to follow up the marriage campaign by leading the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility. In 2014, Washington became the first state to beat the NRA at the ballot when voters approved universal background checks by an overwhelming margin. This year we expect similar gun responsibility measures to come before voters in as many as half a dozen states. The NRA is suddenly looking a bit less powerful.

Like the marriage equality campaign before it, the gun responsibility movement is learning from its mistakes – talking to voters and chipping away at the larger issue one small victory at a time. But most importantly, we’re learning to speak to the shared American belief in community, personal responsibility and the right to protect one’s family from violence.

I have a long personal history with guns. I grew up in small-town Wisconsin, hunting and target shooting. And I will never forget my hunter safety instructor’s lessons: always be 100% sure of your target, treat every firearm with respect, slow down and exercise self-control and leave the land better than when you found it. Above all I was taught that I was responsible for my firearm and for the safety of my community.

We all want to make America safer. And to achieve this we must treat our nation’s gun violence problem for what it is: a public health crisis that now claims over 33,000 American lives a year.

Talking about gun violence in his New Year’s Day address, Obama sounded exasperated – as he always does these days when he talks about guns. Three years ago in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, he said, Congress had the opportunity to pass a bipartisan background check bill “supported by some 90% of the American people” including “a majority of NRA households”. But the Senate blocked the bill at the National Rifle Association’s urging.

“We know that we can’t stop every act of violence,” Obama explained, “but what if we tried to stop even one?”

One by one begins as a grassroots effort. We won marriage equality one conversation at a time, over Thanksgiving dinners and Facebook threads and pitchers of beer. That’s how we’ll end the gun violence epidemic, too: by respectfully and patiently taking the case to your neighbors, friends and family, you effect change where it matters most, making it easier to pass laws at the local level. By beginning these conversations in our communities, we’re fostering an environment where nationwide change isn’t just possible – it will be inevitable.

