Six Questions for Shannon Watts

Six Questions with Steven Beschloss · Jul 30, 2026 · 25m

There are nearly 400 million guns circulating in America — more than one for every man, woman, and child — and 263 mass shootings already in 2026. Yet the carnage has all but vanished from the news. Steven asks Shannon Watts, who founded Moms Demand Action the day after Sandy Hook, what it will take to break through.

Watts rejects the idea that Americans have gone numb. "No parent would accept that," she says — but the media "has run out of ways to tell the story." She traces how the gun lobby won legal immunity no other industry enjoys, why the NRA's collapse hasn't ended the fight, and how…