Michael Bloomberg. Moms Demand Action hold gun safety event in Tulsa

Thank you to each and every one of you for being here with us today. We're so pleased to be able to welcome our Oklahoma volunteers, community partners, and legislators. Thank you to Diamond and the Jewish Federation for hosting us today. Tulsa Police Chief and community policing expert, who was also a longtime Moms volunteer, spoke on just about every panel discussion we've ever had and has been a tremendous friend and ally. His knowledge and expertise is incredibly valuable to what we do. Thank you. Today we are so excited to welcome Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder of Everytown for Gun Safety, and Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action.

Five years ago, 20 children and six educators were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But gun violence didn't start and certainly didn't end with Sandy Hook. San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland—it seems like every week we hear about another mass shooting. We also know that most victims of gun violence don't make the national news. 100 Americans are shot and killed every single day in this country. Nearly 2,900 children and teens are shot and killed every year. Most of their names aren't honored in the news and the national vigils. Moms Demand Action is committed to fighting for public safety measures to protect all people from gun violence and to address relaxed gun laws and loopholes that jeopardize the safety of our families. It's easy, with the constant barrage of stories about another shooting, to become discouraged, to think that nothing will ever change. Let me assure you that change is here, because we have seen it here in Oklahoma.

And all our volunteers have made it happen. Let's talk about what our volunteers have done here in Oklahoma. Our Oklahoma chapter, where the first rally consisted of five people and a few babies in strollers, now has over 4,400 members and has almost doubled in the last year. Last year we helped ensure a veto of SB 1212, a dangerous permitless carry law. In November's elections, we had 32 people run as gun sense candidates with 10 of them winning their races. A few of those gun sense candidates are here—would you raise your hand? We had a gun sense candidate for Congress, Representative Kendra Horn, who ran unashamedly on a gun violence prevention platform and won in a district that has been conservative since the '70s. These wins were possible because our incredible volunteers got out, made calls, knocked on doors, and showed up at the Statehouse. If we want to see real change, we have to continue to support candidates with our time and energy. We have to keep showing up at the Capitol in our red shirts.

I'd like to highlight a few of our Oklahoma volunteers that have made our victories possible. I'd be remiss if I didn't begin with our Minute Moms, amazing volunteers who head to the Capitol at a moment's notice in their red shirts. They sit in the gallery and let our legislators know we are watching and listening to what they do, often for long hours. Our Minute Moms are an integral part of our legislative success. Sadly, we lost one of our Minute Moms, Gary Ryan, last year. Gary could always be counted on for comic relief during long hearing days and especially during photo ops. His presence will be sorely missed this year and we will press on in his memory. Jenny Burch is one of the original members of our Oklahoma chapter and serves as our Oklahoma City local group lead. She has helped to grow our chapter and has persevered through tough times. She is a mentor to our new leaders and is always available to help. Melissa Torres volunteers and was instrumental in organizing volunteers for elections in the OKC area, where our gun sense candidates had the most success. She's a close personal friend of Congresswoman Kendra Horn and has her number on speed dial.

Neil Hester is our state legislator, and so much more. He heads up our now naturally famous Minute Moms team. He never hesitates when I text him and ask, 'Feel like heading to the Capitol today?' Neil has held different roles through the years with us and is happy to share his knowledge. He's also a member of the Everytown Veterans Advisory Council and serves as an incredibly important voice nationally in our movement. Plus, he's just a really great guy. Audrey Burrow is our local group leader in Edmond. She's only been with Moms since our last Advocacy Day, but boy has she hit the ground running. She put together one of the best Wear Orange events we've ever had last year, and was relentless in organizing volunteers for election work. She's the main spokesperson in OKC and never hesitates when I call on her to do an interview, even when reporters show up at her house without notice. She's an example for us all in her constant quest to do and learn more to make us better.

Alton Kang is my former coach, membership chair, and non-membership chair here in Tulsa. She was my partner in this work for the last two years and helped us grow the Oklahoma chapter into the organized, inclusive, and dynamic team it is today. Perfection for this, she was limitless in her drive and used her teaching skills to help educate others to get involved to do this work alongside us. She's moved on to a staff position with Everytown but will always be a vital part of the Oklahoma team. Kay Millan is our social media lead and former Tulsa group leader. She led the Tulsa group through a period of enormous growth after Parkland before taking on a social media role. She organized a powerful Wear Orange event last year. She's done a great job of improving our social media reach and engagement. If you aren't already following our Facebook page, Moms Demand Action OK, you should be. Kay is also a go-to person for interviews in Tulsa.

And finally, Jay Hester is our local group leader in Norman. She's the quiet leader who gets things done, as part of the core that keeps us together. She takes on whatever task is thrown at her and helps keep the Moms team running. She canvassed every weekend like a champ for several gun sense candidates through the election and inspired others to do the same. She's also pretty good at carpool karaoke.

We're often told that Oklahoma is a lost cause, that people don't want to talk about anything to do with guns in Oklahoma. We ignore that advice and we talk about gun violence prevention in Oklahoma. As a result, we defeated every single piece of NRA priority legislation for the last three sessions. So we're going to continue to talk about it until we see real change. We're heading to the Capitol for our annual Advocacy Day on February 26 and would love for all of you to come and join us in the fight. There are cards on the table with the event and RSVP information. We've come a long way in the last six years, but we're just getting started. We're moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, students, and just people who said not one more. We have an amazing team here in Oklahoma and the gun lobby had better expect us because we are ready for them.

Next I'd like to introduce Karen Lynch, our survivor membership lead. As a gun violence survivor, she provides us with a unique perspective and voice that we need to keep going in this work. Her ability to persevere and fight to keep others safe is an inspiration. Thank you.

And I want to extend a very warm welcome to Mayor Bloomberg and Shannon for coming to Tulsa today. As Christine said, I'm Karen Lynch, the Oklahoma survivor membership lead for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, and I was very honored to be able to share my story. It's a story of surviving the murder of my 19-year-old son Tim. He was shot in the back and then in the heart by his ex-father over an argument over a car—at least that's what we assumed after the trial. Tim was going to the local college and studying fire science. He had just passed the hotshot course—I don't know if you know what a hotshot is, they go out on the wildfire fires out on the desert. He just finished the hotshot course and next up was the EMT class. He wanted to be a hotshot and then go down and be a structure fireman in one of the beach cities in Southern California, and he was really looking forward to that. He wanted to have three kids, two boys and a girl. He wanted to eventually become a fire inspector so he could go into a place after a fire, determine how it was started, and prevent that from happening again and destroying somebody else's life. He had a lot of plans for his future, but none of them will ever come about because a gun was too handy in an argument.

I know the path of a survivor. It's been painful, challenging, and full of hurt. But I have learned a lot—like you can cry in your sleep. I found that it was not just my immediate family that was shattered by this violence, but also the extended family and friends, to the extent that the last young man that was with Tim before he was shot and killed himself a year and a half later, mostly because of what happened to Tim and he felt he did not do enough to prevent it. I know the overwhelming heartbreak that rips your heart apart and your life. I know the crazy cycles of grief that seem to pause one day but come back with a double whammy the next day and the next. I know the impact on my surviving son, who has spent many years in depression over losing his younger brother. This violence must stop. I learned that survivors include not just people like me who have had a family member taken by gun violence, but those who have been shot themselves, those who witnessed gun violence, those who've lost close friends and distant family members. They are all impacted by gun violence.

I've learned that we all grieve very differently and in our own time and in our own way, that makes trying to reach survivors a very delicate endeavor, because I never know where they are at any point in time when I try to reach out to them. I never know where I'm going to be at that same point—am I okay today, or am I back in depression and grief? I've found that while I may think a mass murder no longer impacts me, I was very, very wrong. It does impact me. My heart aches again the same way it did when I lost Tim, for those who have lost their family and their friends. Each one of them impacts me so much. But instead of just the overwhelming grief anymore, I now have a way to channel my anger so that no other family will lose their family members or friends. I have a way that I can stop this incalculable impact on America from those that we have lost. So it's not just us who are survivors, but our children, our family, our friends who have been lost. They are lost to America. This violence must stop.

I know that by sitting back and doing nothing, more people, more families, more Americans will share that horror of the impact of gun violence. I got involved with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense and with Everytown to do something, anything that I could to stop this river of blood that's flowing in our streets. And it's because we have allowed it to happen. We used to have many months, maybe even a year, between mass shootings, but not now. Now we don't even get a month before the next one happens, and then the next one, and then the next one. This violence must stop. We need to pass common-sense gun laws and take steps like requiring background checks on every gun sale and make sure that gun owners store their guns properly and responsibly so that no child can find it and accidentally shoot somebody else. Part of my recovery in the first years after losing my child was writing poems. I'd like to share one that I wrote after I saw a CNN documentary on the impact of guns and war on children. It speaks to today's problems in our own country.

"I Dream of Peace. I dream of peace, the writing said, scribbled on the shattered walls. The children wrote these words and hoped that the world would hear their call. I dream of peace, the man had cried as he ran from the guns, but he lost his life to worry to see the hope of which he had some. I dream of peace, a simple wish that escapes so many today. The children dream of sunshine and rain in a place that is safe to play. I dream of peace, the children cry, please take your guns away, stop killing, the hurt, the pain, no child should grow this way. In my whole life I've never known peace, the little child tearfully said. I pray that peace will come someday, because the price has surely been paid." That was written in loving memory of my son Tim. My effort is to achieve that dream of peace, free of the fear of guns. Thank you.

I'd like to introduce Mayor Bloomberg.

Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for that introduction. Thank you for your continued leadership on this issue, and Mike's dedication to gun violence prevention continues to inspire and motivate every single member of Moms Demand Action. I'd also like to extend my gratitude to Christine Jackson, Karen Lynch, and all of the volunteers and survivors in Tulsa and across the state. A few years ago, I would never have imagined that we would have filled a room like this with more than 100 gun safety advocates. But what I've learned over the last six years is that no one should underestimate what can be accomplished in Oklahoma, thanks to the tireless work of Moms Demand Action volunteers.

In fact, just last year, you all spearheaded an extraordinary grassroots campaign to defeat a dangerous permitless carry bill that would have made it legal for Oklahoma residents to carry hidden, loaded handguns in public without a permit, without a background check, and without any gun safety training. And even though you met with lawmakers and showed up at countless hearings, the bill passed. But still, you didn't give up. You began asking for a veto from Governor Mary Fallin, a woman who once rode down the street in a tank to celebrate the opening of Oklahoma's first gun range to serve alcohol—that was very on-brand—and you created this huge coalition of state associations and universities and business owners and leaders and law enforcement organizations. And you talked to your friends and your family about this bill and why it was wrong for Oklahoma. And ultimately, your hard work, the pressure you brought to bear, prevailed. And Governor Fallin vetoed the NRA's number-one priority, putting Oklahoma on a growing list of states that will uphold the simple notion that responsibility should go along with gun rights.

You also played a pivotal role in the November midterm elections by helping to elect Kendra Horn to Congress. Not only did Representative Horn flip the fifth district, she beat an incumbent who also happened to be a gun manufacturer. And that was because of your phone banking and your canvassing and all of the work you did to put a gun sense champion in Congress who is ready to prioritize public safety.

You already know this, especially in Oklahoma, but ending gun violence is a marathon, not a sprint. And there is strength in numbers. Your work this past year is proof of that. Not only are you helping gun sense take root in your state, but you're making sure it grows and spreads across the state. And you're illustrating what so many of us already know in this movement to be true: this is not a red or blue issue, this is a matter of keeping our families safe. We live in a nation where 100 Americans are killed by gun violence every day and hundreds more are injured. We live in a country where gun violence is now the second leading cause of death for children, and the first leading cause of death for Black children and teens. We live in a country where nearly 1 million American women alive today have been shot by an intimate partner. We refuse to accept this as a norm in this country, and we will not let this be the legacy that we leave our children.

Mike already brought this up, but I'm just going to bring it up one more time: there is an advocacy day at your statehouse on February 26. There's strength in numbers, and there's so much more we can do that is good. But we are also going to have to play defense and probably fight more scary legislation again. So I would just ask all of you to bring your friends and your family and complete strangers that you meet in the grocery store and along the roads, and ask them to come with you on February 26.

There will be people who continue to try to weaken the gun laws here, but there is now an unstoppable force of determined mothers, survivors, students, law enforcement, an army of Oklahomans who are going to take them on every step of the way and defend the Sooner State's proud history of gun safety and responsible gun ownership. And you will win this fight. So thank you. Thank you for having me here today. Thank you for inviting us all to be here, to talk to you, to celebrate your amazing success.