Second, gun-control groups focus on persuasion, while gun-rights groups focus on identity. In many ways, my friends and I who disagree on guns are similar. But their views evolved after joining these gun groups. So did their identities. The gun-rights groups were not just persuading them to support gun rights; they were also helping my friends rearticulate their own lives in terms of a broader vision of the future. They were no longer just hunters. They were protectors of a way of life. That is why the N.R.A.’s version of gun rights is so intimately tied to questions of race and identity.

When I joined gun-control groups, I got messages about narrowly defined issues like background checks and safety locks. These messages were a pollster’s dream, tested down to the comma to maximize the likelihood that I would donate or take action. But they never challenged me to rethink who I was or what my relationship to my community was.

Third, for gun-rights groups, the work of engaging with identity and getting people to associate rests on a choice leaders made to invest in building the capacity of ordinary people to participate — and lead — in politics. When I studied groups that were most effective at building a grass-roots base, I found that the key factor to success was the nature of the relationships they created. The most effective groups used relationships as a vehicle for bringing people off the sidelines of public life and teaching them to speak truth to power. You can’t convince someone to rethink who they are or what responsibility they want to take for their community through a mailer.

I have two young children. After Sandy Hook, I joined several gun-control organizations in a desperate effort to do something. These organizations asked me for money and sent me links for places to send emails or make phone calls. But none introduced me to anyone else in the organization or invited me to strategize about what I could do. Instead, I felt like a prop in a game under their control. I eventually asked to be taken off their lists.

Many groups, like Everytown for Gun Safety, are doing vital work to build a movement in the face of the entrenched power of the N.R.A. Reform will take more than raising money or shifting public opinion. The currency that matters in grass-roots power is commitment.

Elected officials can recognize the difference between organizations that can activate only people who are in agreement and those that can transform people who are not. The N.R.A. got over 80,000 people from all over the country to attend its annual meeting in 2017. What gun-control organization can claim the same?