Press

Shannon Watts was named one of TIME Magazine‘s 100 Most Influential People and Glamour‘s Women of the Year. Read below for these and other highlights.

Shannon Watts - Press

2024

The Lancet Logo

Shannon Watts, Fearless Gun Safety Advocate

“There are 400 million guns in a country of 330 million”, says Shannon Watts, the dynamic founder of Moms Demand Action, a grass-roots network in the USA that advocates for public safety measures to prevent gun violence. “Every day, 120 Americans are killed with guns and more than 200 are shot and wounded. Since 2020, guns are now the leading cause of death among children aged 1–19 years in America”, she explains.


2023

Time Magazine logo

The 100 Most Influential People of 2023

Shannon Watts has taken up the mantle of gun-safety advocacy with the hope that in a generation, this uniquely American crisis will be an appalling relic of the past.


Washington Post logo

Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, who took on the NRA, to retire from group she created

Shannon Watts, one of the country’s most influential gun-safety activists, says she will retire later this year from Moms Demand Action, the grass-roots advocacy group she began in her kitchen a decade ago and grew into a political juggernaut.


The Cut logo

Shannon Watts Looks Back on 10 Years of Moms Demand Action

Whether she’s facing down Mt. Kilimanjaro or the National Rifle Association, Shannon Watts has never been one to shy away from a challenge.


Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts on a decade of taking on the NRA

In 2012, Shannon Watts was a former communications executive turned stay-at-home mom with 5 children.


2022

The Wrap logo

Changemakers

From Lizzo to Shannon Watts to Quinta Brunson to Jamie Lee Curtis, here are the extraordinary women who made a mark this year.


Glamour logo

Glamour Women of the Year

There is an infamous tweet from 2015 that Shannon Watts will sometimes bring up in conversation.


Last Day podcast

Activism Has To Include Joy (with Shannon Watts)

This summer, Stephanie was invited to the White House to hear President Biden give his remarks on the passing of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.


Glamour logo

Women Are Winning the Fight for Gun Safety

Nearly 10 years ago, I acted on an instinct that would change the trajectory of the nation: After the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I bet that women could take on one of the wealthiest, most powerful special interest groups in American politics and rewrite our country’s history of gun violence—and started the grassroots movement Moms Demand Action.


Vox logo

Critics said nothing would change after Sandy Hook. Actually, a lot has.

Shannon Watts started Moms Demand Action as a Facebook group in December 2012.


CNN logo

The gun lobby is hell-bent on flooding us with weapons. They’ve just been dealt a blow

These days, it’s impossible to celebrate – or even gather – in American communities without fear, including in places of worship, inside our cars, at grocery stores, the mall, or even in our schools.


Shondaland logo

Shannon Watts on 10 Years of Fighting Gun Violence

On December 14, 2012, Shannon Watts was glued to the television. “I saw the breaking news that there was an active shooter in Newtown, Connecticut, and couldn’t believe 20 children and 6 educators could be slaughtered in the sanctity of an elementary school,” she tells Shondaland.


Stay Tuned With Preet podcast

It’s the Guns (with Shannon Watts)

After the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a bipartisan group of senators agreed on a narrow proposal for gun safety legislation, the first sign of congressional movement on the issue in decades.


Cosmopolitan logo

Shannon Watts: “Nobody Can Sit on the Sidelines Anymore”

You may know Shannon Watts from Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement she founded nearly a decade ago that has since attracted over 8 million supporters committed to the fight against gun violence.


Oprah Daily logo

“Lawmakers Have Enabled This Gun Violence Epidemic. It Stops Now”

I am what you would call an accidental activist. Nearly 10 years ago, I was home folding laundry when I heard the news that 20 first graders and six educators had been killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.


We Can Do Hard Things Podcast

How We’ll Save Our Kids From the Gun Lobby’s Greed with Shannon Watts

Shannon Watts was a stay at home mother of five when she founded Moms Demand Action, the nation’s first and largest grassroots movement fighting against gun violence – and the most powerful counter-movement the gun lobby has ever faced.


Time Magazine logo

White Supremacy Is Deadly. Guns Make It Deadlier

Here we are again. A white man radicalized by racist rhetoric carrying an assault rifle just massacred Black people going about their daily lives, causing lifelong trauma and suffering.


Tricycle Logo

Drips on a Rock

On December 14, 2012, a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, took the lives of 26 people, 20 of them children.


Majority 54 podcast

"God, Guns, and Gays"

Jason and Ravi are joined by Shannon Watts, founder of the nation’s largest grassroots group against gun violence, Moms Demand Action.


Newsweek logo

Ghost Guns Are Real Guns. Now They'll Finally Be Treated as Such

Ghost guns—untraceable firearms that can be assembled from parts sold online without a background check—are the fastest-growing public safety crisis in the United States.


ELLE Magazine Logo

Research Shows Gun Violence and Misogyny Are Closely Linked. It’s Time to Make Sure Abusers Can't Buy Guns

We’ve become experts on the nexus between misogyny and gun culture because we’ve lived it—in person and online—since the day we decided to stand up to the gun lobby.


Bakari Sellers Podcast

Comprehensive Gun Reform With Shannon Watts

Shannon talks about what led to her founding the nation’s largest grassroots group fighting gun violence, taking on the NRA, and the prospect of reforming gun laws in 2022.


2021

CNN logo

The other back-to-school threat

Bennie Hargrove should be at school right now, scribbling in his notebook, eating lunch with his friends and sharing updates about life as a middle-schooler with his brother and sisters.


Daily News logo

How to stem the rising tide of gun violence

As we recover from yet another weekend filled with firearm violence across the country, any prospect of a “normal” summer, which so many American families craved after the COVID-19 pandemic, is quickly fading away.


ELLE Magazine Logo

When We Say 'Return to Normal,' We Can't Mean This

Last Monday, a 21-year-old man killed 10 people with a Ruger AR-556 pistol inside a Boulder, CO grocery store.


The Nation Logo

The NRA Can’t Stop Gun Safety Legislation This Time

It’s become an all-too-familiar routine in America: A mass shooting in a public place that shakes our collective consciousness is quickly followed by thoughts and prayers, media attention, and calls to action.


2020

USA Today logo

The National Rifle Association faces its worst nightmare: accountability

On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association for breaking New York charities law — the result of an investigation into the NRA’s finances that began in April 2019.


Forbes logo

How Shannon Watts Says You Can Be A Mom And Advocate During Coronavirus

Shannon Watts is an advocate and a proud mom of five children. Before the public became aware of her, she had a fifteen-year career as a communications executive for public relations agencies and Fortune 100 companies.


MSNBC logo

How Shannon Watts went from stay-at-home mom to founder of the largest gun violence prevention org in the U.S.

For Shannon Watts, a mother of five and the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the latest mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX, that left at least 19 children and two teachers dead underscores the epidemic the gun violence that led her to devote her life to gun control.


2019

Washington Post logo

‘The NRA is weaker than they’ve ever been,’ says founder of gun violence prevention group Moms Demand Action

Shannon Watts, 48, is the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun violence prevention nonprofit she started after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012.


New York Times logo

Shannon Watts’s Work Diary: The Demanding Job of Running ‘Moms Demand Action’

Shannon Watts was a consultant and stay-at-home mother of five in Zionsville, Ind., with maybe 75 Facebook friends when a gunman walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012 and fatally shot 20 children.