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By Rebecca Bond

When an incident like the shooting of a mother by her 2-year-old child in an Idaho Walmart occurs, it’s amazing how quickly the conversation shifts from safety to politics. Politics triggers pre-programmed emotions. It generates conversation and, let’s face it, amps the theater of media and 140-character tweets. But when politics distracts us from focusing on concrete issues that can potentially save lives – by preventing unsafe behaviors in the future – it hurts us all. Why did the unfortunate mother carry her firearm off-body? We know that she was using a zippered pouch, but does anyone seriously believe that was a wise choice with a nimble and curious toddler? Safety isn’t just about prescribed rules, it’s also taking time to consider situational context . . .

When these incidents happen, shock and blame seem to trump more pragmatic dialogue. Or as Sgt. Joe Friday of Dragnet said: Just the facts, ma’am. Shouldn’t we dig deep enough to find the remedy as well as the cause of the tragedy? The ‘anti-gun’ side trumpets the tragedy, but the gun owner’s side disregard much of what they say because of their own political orientation. The gun side often behaves as if making too much of these incidents creates political risk and harm, and so takes a dissonant stance in response to an avoidable tragedy. Gun owner’s shy away from the political outrage of the ‘gun control’ people. This is a big problem. Take politics and culture out of the issues of responsibility and safety that should inform intelligent conversation and messaging. The leaders of the gun community and control advocates can both own this. They both can exhibit the level of leadership common in other segments of society in order for progress to be made.

However, if that leadership is not on the immediate horizon, gun owners are the ones that can actually take immediate concrete steps to reduce avoidable tragedies. They should not shy away from embracing a safety code that respects the rights of their neighbors and protects innocent lives. The airline industry, and even individual pilots are fine describing a crash as ‘pilot error’, and more importantly, using the ‘learning’ to avoid future disasters. We find no issue in placing responsibility for the majority of fatal auto crashes on the driver. It is usually NOT the machine, but the operator of the machine who is at fault. As they say in the military, there is no such thing as ‘accidental discharge.’

If we continue to make safety a political ‘third rail’ – or the province of Twitter and media – we have less chance to gain the focus needed to create behavioral changes, and these incidents will continue to happen over and over again. No one in the gun industry we have spoken to says they are not committed to making safety paramount. Everyone acknowledges the many opportunities for human error (whether through lax safety choices or just being uniformed). Many want to do more to promote safety.

But the lack of support for coming up with more innovative ways to promote smart safety campaigns is glaring. No one wants to read another article about an avoidable shooting. Taking this on is something that is aspirational and heroic. An industry that has been referred to as a ‘cottage industry’, but now generates national conversations every day, should at least consider other ways to promote non-political safety messages that talk to new and unschooled consumers of firearms. Along with reminding those who have grown up around guns. No one gets hurt with an extra reminder or two about safety. No one.

Our organization has launched two national safety PSAs. The most recent, ‘Playthings‘, has been viewed by almost 7 million people; the most viewed gun safety spot in history. The Blaze’s Dana Loesch, was one of the first to say she liked the campaign and the use of humor to promote safety. Getting more people and industry folks behind campaigns like ours – by trying new approaches –  will save lives and amplify a non-political message we can all agree on. Thank you.

Rebecca Bond is the founder of Evolve.

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152 COMMENTS

  1. Two words -“Shit Happens”

    As easy as it would be to say the toddler wouldnt have accessed the gun if it were on her person, its a statement we can’t say. There are YouTube videos of toddlers accessing entry level handgun safes with no adult assistance.

    Given that and the general curiosity of kids , said toddler could very well have lifted the gun out of an IWB/OWB holster and fatally fired it anyways. Again, there’s video footage of that happening .

    The more people who carry guns, the more mistakes will happen. Some of them will be totally unavoidable- again, if she carried IWB or on person the kid could have just lifted the piece from there instead of a purse. We have to face the likely possibility no human thing besides her NOT carrying would have prevented this tragedy-but then , we could be reading about her in the crime blotter instead. Reminds me of a SWAT officer who got shot at and the suspect’s first bullet hit the holster right at his Sig P226’s takedown lever. When said officer went for his gun, he drew and pointed a frame at the bad guy.

    Bottom line-sometimes the “Chance” card burns you, and that’s just that. This poor mom couldn’t have really prevented this. She could have educated the 2 year old , but plenty of kids have wreaked havoc despite comprehensive parenting.

    • There’s a saying in the warfighting community that applies here and I think sums up much of what you said in your post.

      “There are three sides to every fight. You, your enemy, and lady luck; and the fight is not over until She gets her say.”

      Also “shit happens.” That works pretty well too.

      This is a tragedy that could have been prevented, but if it wasn’t her, it would be someone else doing something else that got themself killed. Stupid (or intelligent) people do stupid (or just ill-advised) things and win stupid (just sad) prizes. It happens all the time. The one thing the gun community can, and should, do to prevent more of these accidents is take more time to help teach others. Those of us who grew up around firearms, had great teachers, or simply learned through constant focused efforts, should make sure that we are giving back and passing on that knowledge to as many people as we can.

    • There’s no way she could have prevented it? Actually, yes, there is a simple way she could have prevented it. She could have not brought a gun with her to run errands. Remember, safety is no accident.

        • I never said anything with regards to whether she should or should not bring a gun to run errands. Just pointing out that the most obvious and simple way to prevent this would have been to not bring the gun along. When ST says, “bottom line, there’s no way she could have prevented this”, the counterpoint is so obvious that it needs to be pointed out.

    • Your comments on the woman who was shot by her child are sooo far off from the reality of any situation. Your comments on how a child could have taken that gun from a holster while on her person is just wrong. to say that you could have educated a 2 year old on gun safety,, again, your wrong! to say that, well shit happens, is wrong. The sad reality is that there are some out there that will believe what you have written, again, that is sooo wrong. The idea of gun safety is as simple as breathing. the real issue is that some do not want to take “responsibility” for there actions. Ive used a gun for over 45 years and carried one prof. for more than 37 years. Never have I taught or excepted your premise of “shit happens”! Any time you might like to take a class on safety and responsibility I would gladly allow to attend one of my schools for free.

      • You are so right.

        I think what is missing in much of the dialogue these days about guns is for gun owners to openly and transparently agree that guns are tools designed to kill. And as such, these tools are inherently dangerous and, therefore, deserve our sincere and serious respect. I think if we openly address the purpose, dangers and risk mitigation around guns, we can stop talking past each other and begin the process of constructive dialogue.

        I have a commercial pilots license and am instrument rated. Airplanes are inherently dangerous because they can fall out of the sky. Many wood working tools are also inherently dangerous. They don’t kill but how many fingers are missing each year because of them? Automobiles are inherently dangerous. Roughly 30,000 people die each year in auto accidents.

        What makes a difference, if we are to have and use these dangerous tools, is training and an understanding and appreciation of risk management around their operation. So back to guns.

        Gun owners have a marvelous safety record as does commercial aviation. Roughly 3% of gun deaths are caused by accidents. And it is safer to fly commercial than to drive between two locations. What does this tell us?

        Aside from the fact that 97% of gun deaths are a result of actions taken to kill (oneself or someone else), we need not dwell on what ills our society here. I wish to focus on the 3% and the greater problem associated with the collective fear of guns possessed by many people in our society who vote.

        Although there is an excellent safety record for guns, we can do better and must because each and every accident creates a much larger perception that there is a huge problem at hand. As my first supervisor once told me, “Perception is 9 tenths of reality.”

        So let’s look at training as you point out. Can you imagine a pilot being permitted to fly after 4-8 hours of training? Now reflect a moment on obtaining a CC permit. Does someone who never owned a gun or shot a gun really prepared to carry? Is 4-8 hours of training really considered safe?

        I believe that training should center around the fact that guns are tools to kill and are inherently dangerous. Period. And most important, the majority of training should NOT be about target practice; its about safety and risk management. In aviation, training is not about how well you grease a landing, its about how safe you are in your decision making both during normal flight and when there is a problem causing high stress. Hmmm …. sound familiar? A CC situation is actually under enormously high stress.

        So what does it mean to be a responsible gun owner? Ask yourself this. Would you let your child into a fully equipped wood shop without making sure that not one dangerous tool was accessible? Of course not. But how many gun owners, for example, leave their gun(s) in a drawer, unlocked .. .just in case in a ready state? Or carry in a fashion that creates risk? (that is another subject). I get the “just in case” part and agree. However, what if the neighbors stop by and they have, unexpectedly, children who enter the house and they happen to be very curious and you lose sight of them during your conversations and they wander where you keep your “just in case” gun?

        My point is this, as gun owners, let’s get serious, honest and redefine what responsibility actually means as a gun owner. We must do so or, unfortunately, we will loose the right and that would be tragic for all of us and in a most ironic way, to those who fear guns because guns are those very powerful and dangerous tools in the hands of citizens that keep tyrants of all kinds at bay ranging from an attack in a dark parking lot to a dictator. Just ask the ghosts of the 10s of millions who died at the hands of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and other tyrants …. all in the 20th century. Imagine if all of those people had a military rifle and a hand gun with a 1,000 rounds stored in their home and they new how to use them with great effectiveness. There is no question in my mind that most of them would be alive today.

        I pray that those who fear guns and want to take them away from citizens wake up to this chilling fact. Yes, they should fear guns. Everyone should have a healthy respect for the power and danger that a gun represents. But this is why the Colt 45 revolver was called the “Peacemaker.” If you were good and had this tool strapped to your leg, tyrants and those planning to perpetrate evil on you would have serious second thoughts. The gun actually stops violence. This is along the same lines as what my dad, a Lt in the Marines during WWII taught me when teaching me about guns, “Son, the gun is the great equalizer.”

  2. It’s unlikely, but not impossible, that the NRA might produce a modest series of subtle TV ads, perhaps featuring average US citizens in the foreground, calmly talking about guns and how they feel about them, as they go about their daily business. In the background, however, would be a series of potential “bad actors” as a favorite teacher of mine once termed them. Thugs out of place in the suburban scene, prowlers in parking lots, agents of “diversity”… TV ads are not cheap, and they’d want to hire a top-flight agency to develop, produce and shoot (ha) the ads. Just a thought.

    Or feature real tales of fortuitous firearm use, such as the teenager who found herself confronting a cougar and not the bobcat she expected, which she calmly dispatched.

  3. Take politics and culture out of the issues of responsibility and safety that should inform intelligent conversation and messaging.

    That statement is beyond silly. Gun people didn’t inject politics into the issue. Gun people didn’t start the culture war. All we want is the G to keep it’s bloody hands off our culture and our guns.

    None of us should be so insane as to believe that we can take culture and politics out of the issues. The gungrabbers have to do that. And they never will.

    • It’s not a matter of who started inserting politics into the argument, It’s about the fact that both sides wallow in the politics. Rebecca advocates, and rightly so IMNSHO, that politics needs to be extracted from this particular topic.

      • if I’m wallowing in politics, it’s because the left turned on the tap and keeps on pumping it’s bilge in my direction.

        When the Democrats stop trying to steal our firearms and our rights, then we can focus on important issues like crime and gun safety.

        Nobody preaches the gospel of gun safety more than the NRA, which it turns out is Public Enemy #1 for the left. So, nothing that the left says about safety — or anything else — can be believed. It’s a scam. And I’m not falling for it.

        • Very well said Ralph, and I couldn’t agree more. The pilot comparison struck me as particularly idiotic, given that airlines are not a political issue. Same with her remark about cars; both of the author’s points ignore the basic reality of the gun grabbers, who are notorious for blaming guns rather than people.

        • Yup.

          And on that note, I am so incredibly tired of hearing about this woman getting shot.

          Either someone else did it and blamed the kid (I saw interesting posts lower on this page that ask some questions pertaining to that) or this woman was an irresponsible, concealed carrying gun owner.

          Either way… ::yawn::. How many people are killed every year in automobile accidents for being distracted by a 2 year old or the wheel being turned? I’m thinking a decent number.

          Shit happens and people are stupid. The only reason anyone even cares about this story is that the kid was so young and the mother was attractive. Usually accidental shooting deaths are caused by kids who are a little older.

        • When the NRA talks about gun safety, it’s only within their clubs. They aren’t putting out ads advocating for gun safety, just about gun politics.

          If they can put out ads complaining about the President’s kids having bodyguards, they can put one out telling people to make sure their gun isn’t a toy.

          I’m military trained so I treat my weapons with respect. Unfortunately there’s way too many people out there that are either too untrained or too stupid to handle a firearm safely. The only gun safety they’ve ever been taught came from playing Grand Theft Auto.

      • Extracting politics from a POLITICAL issue (second amendment. that’s politics by definition), is impossible. That’s like reasoning with terrorists. We all understand that jihadists will not be reasoned with. Neither will any other sociopathic criminal, so we don’t assume “reasoning with them” is going to be part of the terms of engagement.

        Liberals will actively fight to remove our rights which is automatically a political issue. You cannot reason with a “government should take care of me and you and I don’t care what the reality is la la la” person about anything involving guns.

        Elsewhere in this thread and other places I (and one or two other people) have said NRA would be smart to do some very visible gun safety ads showing directly how they have been working toward education with gun safety. Those messages aren’t for liberals and they aren’t for people already on our side. They are for fence sitters who don’t understand what’s at stakes and the lies told by the far left to dismantle our rights.

        When we’re talking about constitutionally enshrined rights and people out there who want to take it away it is political by definition and will always be so. There is no way for it not to be political. Even if everybody agreed and nobody was trying to take guns or gun rights, it would STILL be political.

          • Palin actually made the (quite true) assertion that Russia is visible from Alaska, as a small part of a larger answer in the context of a question about her inexperience on foreign policy matters.

        • From Snopes:

          “As to the question of whether one can actually see Russia from Alaska, Governor Palin was correct: such a view is possible from more than one site in that state. A Slate article on the topic noted that:
          In the middle of the Bering Strait are two small, sparsely populated islands: Big Diomede, which sits in Russian territory, and Little Diomede, which is part of the United States. At their closest, these two islands are a little less than two and a half miles apart, which means that, on a clear day, you can definitely see one from the other.
          Also, a 1988 New York Times article reported that:
          To the Russian mainland from St. Lawrence Island, a bleak ice-bound expanse the size of Long Island out in the middle of the Bering Sea, the distance is 37 miles. From high ground there or from the Air Force facility at Tin City atop Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost edge of mainland North America, on a clear day you can see Siberia with the naked eye.”

          http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/russia.asp#AklZVFSFG8pLfAsq.99

  5. There are plenty of accidental discharges in the military, they are far outnumbered by negligent discharges but they do exist.

      • I hear some Remington shotguns are known to exhibit accidental discharges.

        (“Accidental” means an actual mechanical failure that causes the gun to go “boom” when not intended, while “negligent” means that human error – i.e. a finger on the trigger – causes the gun to go “boom” when not intended.)

  6. They should not shy away from embracing a safety code that respects the rights of their neighbors and protects innocent lives.

    Ms. Bond, you must not spend a lot of time around gun owners (or on TTAG), because all anyone talked about after this terrible event was safety safety safety. We all embrace the Jeff Cooper safety code vigorously — so much so that some gun people get a rap for being “safety Nazis”. Shooters who flout this code are called out quick. TTAG doesn’t publish IGOTD just for morbid chuckles. It’s education by negative example.

    There is no lack of support for safety training in the gun owning community. The lack of support comes from everyone who thinks anything the NRA does is disingenuous or self-serving. Media groups, educators and other orgs can try to pretend Eddie Eagle doesn’t exist, but then don’t talk about a “glaring” omission of safety programs. (Eddie Eagle is about as apolitical as you can get, unless you consider eagles Republican.)

    EVERYONE is now rethinking and discussing off-body carry, just as we all debated the Serpa after the Tex Grebner incident. We don’t bury our tragedies here. We learn from them.

    • …consider other ways to promote non-political safety messages that talk to new and unschooled consumers of firearms.

      If by “non-political” you mean unconnected with the NRA or NSSF, why? No one ever asks for non-political information on hate groups. They go to the SPLC or the NAACP and are fine with it. If Moveon.org wants to start a gun safety program, they can go for it.

      • Agreed. I’m 100% for keeping this all political because at the end of the day what matters to me is my second amendment right to keep and bear arms. There is nothing apolitical about that. Nor will there ever be.

  7. Don’t know where all the info is coming from, I hadn’t heard it. But now we’re saying a 2-year-old removed the gun from a zippered pouch before shooting his mother with it? Where can I locate the video of this tragedy? I’d like to see that.

    • While a video would be morbid, I do kind of want to see one to confirm this is actually what happened. Not saying it couldn’t happen, but in later news reports it wasn’t just her with her kid and other kids by herself in walmart. It was her husband to. (This stated by the father-in-law in an interview.) So how exactly did SHE, all the other children, AND the husband turn their back/lose focus on the baby and purse left in the cart for long enough for this tragedy to unfold?

      Who told police it was the kid that did it? I mean IS there a video anywhere confirming this? It’s possible a lot of weird crap and irresponsibility came together to make this happen exactly as stated, but I don’t know… the story to me is… weird. And she’s a nuclear scientist? Really? I know that you can be book smart and lack common sense, but there are about a million things in this that make me not 100% trust all facts of this story unless I see some real proof. Obviously nobody is obligated to show me a video, but I’m not obligated to believe every story the media spouts out without and actual proof, either. Particularly when it sounds as wonky as all this.

      • Links to news articles saying that hubby was with her (or at least in the store) when she was shot, please?

        Only reports I’ve read (here’s one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2-year-old-accidentally-kills-his-mom-in-wal-mart/2014/12/30/903af806-9088-11e4-a66f-0ca5037a597d_story.html) say that his son/her hubby wasn’t at the store when the event occurred.

        I have a hard time imagining he was there, but was able to make it look like he wasn’t anywhere near there.

        • http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mom-shot-dead-walmart-gun-purse-christmas-article-1.2062315

          I think you’re right. This isn’t the original article I was looking at, but it’s got most of the same text. in the article it says: “The distraught father-in-law said his son Colt gave Veronica the bag before the couple drove hundreds of miles north to visit him the day after Christmas.”

          I conflated that with the shopping trip probably. I could have sworn that he said something about “them all going shopping” but it might have just meant “them all” was the mother and the kids. The way the original story I read that made me think that was organized made it sound like that.

          But you’re right, everything I’m reading now says it was just the mom and the kids. I thought when I read that other article that it was a clarification of an earlier assumption since there were so many misreportings of this story earlier. It makes more sense and seems more likely now that it went down this way.

          In the comments thread of the original article I can’t find now (because I can’t remember what site it was on. This was all over the internet), someone had suggested they suspected the husband, which implies at least one other person read the organization of that particular article the way I did.

  8. Rebecca and Evolve clearly aren’t paying attention. Discussions of this incident and how to learn from it are everywhere. This was discussed on both GunTalk and Armed American Radio this week. True gun safety conversations are everywhere.

      • Ding! Ding! Ding Evolve is a couple of MARKETEERS (like Shannon Watts) who think they have the magic formula to “fix” the “Gun violence” problem in the US. The want us all to “just get along”. Wonder what they’d propose on the whole Paris/Terrorist front? Let’s have a discussion?!

        My wife has a concealed carry purse she bought on a whim (expensive whim!) She won’t use it though, because we have a 4 yr. old grandson who might get into her purse. She isn’t carrying everyday until she’s comfortable w/her training & method of carry.

        Go away, Evolve. Sell something innocuous like Pampers or Charmin.

        • From the article:

          “I started an organization called Evolve, the sole purpose of which is to promote culture change around gun safety and responsibility and more innovative ways to get more people to think about it. Using the ‘tools’ of creative and media. To some, that seemed too superficial, with not enough ‘teeth.’ To others it prompted the tired ‘false flag’ statement. I respectfully disagree, because we know that fresh ways of communicating can be some of the most powerful antidotes to the most intractable problems.

          To agree or disagree with the politics of lions is not the point. I believe both sides can have conversations about how we can do better”

          ***

          People think it’s a “false flag” statement because “gun safety” is a KNOWN dog whistle used by anti-gun rights orgs who want to fool people into supporting their anti-gun rights activities by using non-threatening sounding goals that “surely everybody is for!” like “gun safety”. Yeah, everybody is for gun safety. I don’t know anybody not for it, but it depends on if you plan to achieve that with just education on gun safety itself or if you plan to achieve it with legislation and more gun restriction, as the left has proven they will do. There is no “compromise” between both sides here because nobody on the far left “just” wants gun safety. They want guns gone.

          Also… re: both sides can have a conversation about what we can do better… so she acknowledges there that she HAS a side, she’s not actually switzerland on the matter. She just won’t share it. Yeah, how non-suspicious.

        • Summer: “re: both sides can have a conversation about what we can do better… so she acknowledges there that she HAS a side”

          Still working my way through who/what Evolve “is.” But with all due respect, to acknowledge that there are two sides is not an admission to being aligned with one of them. To use your analogy, Switzerland could have legitimately said there were two sides during WW II and still remained neutral.

        • From the syntax of her statement, what “we” can do better implied to me that she had skin in the game… as in an actual side. That might not be the case of that particular statement but really, who would get riled up after Newtown, and start a gun safety group that went to so much trouble to not talk about politics. It’s hard for me to imagine someone with that level of passion not having a side in a highly political issue. I remain skeptical that she has no side, and especially skeptical that that side is “2A supporting, freedom loving, gun enthusiast.”

    • And I believe Rebecca was on Gun Talk not too long ago and Tom just creamed her, it was a massacre.

      • Massacre it was not. Tom and I might disagree on Super Bowl ads, but when it comes to safety and responsponsibility, we agree.

      • I remember that. She spoke exactly the same way she writes in the above essay — mostly doublespeak, the language of policy-brained government and nonprofit flacks who try to avoid actually saying anything.

        As I recall, Tom pressed her on whether she would support extending the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program to teach more young children about gun safety (primarily not touching them) and Ms. Bond would only reply that she would love to “have a conversation” with the operators of the EE program. Tom pointed out that she hadn’t answer his question, and she only repeated that she would be happy to “have a meeting” or some similar dodge.

        Whenever people like that won’t answer a direct question a second time, especially after having it pointed out to them, my hackles (like the shoulder thingie) go up.

        • I’m skeptical when she wants to “have a conversation” with them and refuses to answer the question head on. Just like she won’t answer any other question head on. Just like a liberal.

  9. “The gun side often behaves as if making too much of these incidents creates political risk and harm, and so takes a dissonant stance in response to an avoidable tragedy. . . . Take politics and culture out of the issues of responsibility and safety that should inform intelligent conversation and messaging. The leaders of the gun community and control advocates can both own this. ”
    There is something to this point in the OP. If we the PotG don’t appear to the public to claim ownership of the gun-safety issue then we will leave some of the battlefield to the Antis. We know what we are doing – at ranges, in classes, through the NRA – but, we probably aren’t effective enough in making the non-gun-owning public aware of how much effort we put into safety education.
    Instructors of First-Steps-Pistol and analogous courses need to include a hand-out for women shooters that draws their attention to best-practices for carrying for women. (We all need to be very conscious of our environments; e.g., when grandchildren come to visit the night-stand gun needs to be put away.) Women have two special concerns: 1) their clothing doesn’t lend itself to carrying; and, 2) they are our society’s primary care-givers to young children. These aren’t insurmountable obstacles; but, they call for a concerted effort to keep and bear safely.
    Personally, I’ve chosen to carry a single-action pistol in Condition 2 despite the known disadvantages. If a woman can cock the hammer quickly, perhaps this is a safer alternative than a safety or no-safety type of gun and carry mode. That cocking-the-hammer step is one more failure a child would have to make happen to create an accident.

    • Yes and no. As I and others have commented, the gun community has not been silent about this incident. But the media, for the most part, doesn’t care what we have to say because guns=evil. Period. They don’t want to talk to the SAF or their ilk. It would be like calling up the KKK to them.

      On the other hand, the NRA doesn’t comment on these incidents anyhow, and their pernicious silence has been discussed on TTAG. Like it or not, the NRA is the go-to for gun news and they need to be more open to that.

  10. I don’t want to sound ungracious to a guest author, but while we should of course continue to promote education regarding safe firearm handling practices, the reality is that the mortality rate due to negligent firearm discharges is at a historic low even as firearm ownership reaches record highs. I couldn’t help but get the feeling, after reading the entire post, that it was merely a well-couched plug for the linked PSAs.

    • This is a good, important point. Clearly, people are doing a good job with gun safety already. The rate of accidental gun deaths has been going down while gun ownership and carry rates have been going up. Currently, something like three times as many people die each year from falling down while just walking along as do from accidental shootings.

    • Chip, it IS a plug for the PSA too. Our message is ‘safety’ and that’s what we are trying to ‘sell.’ And our only return-on-investment is if we prevent one avoidable accident from happening by 1. having people secure their firearms and 2. continue to keep the rules of safety top-of-mind.

      • ” Our message is ‘safety’ and that’s what we are trying to ‘sell.’”

        Then stop lying about what we are or are not saying. Stop acting like the NRA has no dog in the ‘safety’ fight…that is PRO-SAFETY fight.

        How many links on your site are there to either:

        (1) NRA’s Eddie Eagle program?
        (2) Any of about 10,000 web sites that quote and advocate STRICT adherence to Jeff Cooper’s Four Rules?
        (3) The TTAG page for the toddler-shoots-mom story when it broke with a hundred+ comments discussing SAFETY VIOLATION and ways to prevent similar incidents?
        (4) Blog posts (or your own) or one of your “PSA’s” promoting the return of gun safety classes in elementary schools?

        You can claim you are all about “Safety,” but I’m not buying it for a second. I’ve watched at least one of your PSA’s. Pure tripe.

        You want to promote safety? You want to be part of a real solution? Here’s how you do it: tell people to find someone knowledgeable about guns to teach them how to safely handle guns. The learner does not have to be a gun owner…but people need to know facts.

        We don’t teach children to be ‘safe’ crossing busy street by trying to hide busy streets and cars and trying to act like if they close their eyes and wish the danger away. We teach children how to handle dangerous situations by exposing them to the dangers (in a controlled way) with rational solutions to mitigate the risk.

        • That’s a big part of why her message is so offensive. She wants to do ‘gun safety’ by erasing the contributions by gun people. Like we’re all sitting around doing moronic things with our guns until she showed up to save us from ourselves. And reports indicate that before Newtown she knew next to nothing about guns. And immediately after Newtown this was forming this “apolitical” gun safety group that somehow doesn’t seem aware (despite a seemingly endless stream of “safety ambassadors”) that she’s arriving at the party after we’ve already been doing safety!

  11. Evolve stumbled out of the gate, misrepresenting comments by Dave Coonan, and causing problems for the marketing guy, who frankly got egg on his face, too, per earlier TTAG articles.

    Dana Loesche didn’t give Evolve a pass for their messaging, either, more like a gentle schooling, in this youtube interview that apparently is where Ms Bonds qoute comes from.

    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CMKaB4W5tU

    And despite past questions about who is behind them, Evolve Together, Inc is not listed in CharityNavigator or Guidestar, as to funding sources, ratings on governance, nor is their any info on Evolves website or Facebook page.

    Rebecca, please post your 2013 IRS 990 disclosures, which are public records for anyone who submits the official request anyway,

    and explain why TTAG readers should trust your “third way” isn’t just more New York pr sockpuppetry, like MDA’s discredited “common-sense”?

    Who is on your Board, with expertise in gun safety? Who else is on your Board, and why? Who is paying for the PSA’s, and your time?

    Its ok, if you are a work from home Mom, and this safety conversation is your passion, in between your architectural firm marketing gig, but

    This is basic marketing, differentiation:
    Why and how are you any better or different than the dozens of existing safety experts, including the NRA, with a long track record?

    • And Rebecca, with respect spinning a humorous clip about dildos as the #1 “firearm safety video of all time”

      Is not helping your credibilty…ok, the preening in self-superiority progressive left, and the FakeBook mommies marketing themselves, on Instagram, Pinterest, PuffHos and so on, might find it amusing…

      But here’s who the firearms community trusts,
      or at least, those most interested in learning more, as they start seriously considering buying firearms…

      http://abcnews.go.com/US/youtubes-rising-gun-video-stars/story?id=21519909

      When the ad agencies are all done patting themselves on the back, for say, helping politicians lie and mislead citizens, via the latest community organized “under the radar”* movement, you can go ‘listen to your customers’ in the media, and wonder why the country is more polarized, and media and advertising credibility is at all time lows…(you’ve seen the Pew polls, I am sure)…

      * who wrote that book, anyway?

      • ‘Preening’ is the last thing that anyone has time for. Kudos to any creative team who can come up with a message and campaign that reaches millions of people and, perhaps, just perhaps, prompts people to have many more discussions around securement and safe handling of firearms. There is not a single thing wrong with that. There can never be one too many of those conversations. And if is us, the NRA, the NSSF, the manufacturers, this blog, who can chip in to make more of those high-impact campaigns, well, that is a good thing.

        • So where are those publicly available IRS forms and other documents that let us know who we’re dealing with?

          Evade. Evade. PR talk. Evade. Ignore requests for actual real information.

        • No, not evade, evade, evade. It’s called busy running a small and hard-working operation. It’s like any start-up with little funds. We just secured our 501c3 in mid-2014. When our accountant is done with the filings, you be sure to look it up. You know what will amaze…how much one can get done if everyone chips in goods and services. And you call every one of your friends to help out. And there are people who write in to offer their services. And those very nice people from all parts of the country who donate $10 and $15. Those donations actually mean a lot to us because of the spirit in which they are made. And it all adds up. Bottom line, when there isn’t the luxury of millionaires or billionaires in our midst, we start dialing the phone and knocking on doors asking people to do stuff. And my husband and I have personally funded much of this. I work full-time on this – no salary – and I raise three kids, two stepsons, two dogs, a hamster and my husband, on occasion. We have a legal board per our 501c3 – that means founders. The only ‘luminaries’ we have are those who are willing to work hard, and they are our advisory board. You will meet some of our advisory board members from the gun community when they begin to publish content on our site and our future campaigns come out. We will include their bios as well. People can kick-the-tires on this, or just see what else we do. We have some pretty cool safety things coming out. And a little help from all, well, we can get things done a little quicker. In the meantime, we hope you continue to check us out and share one of our campaigns if you like it. Thanks.

        • All of this sounds so commendable and fluffy but I just don’t really trust you. Sorry. Too many people in too many places online have suggested your using a dog whistle. If you’re not, that’s really unfortunate, but given the climate and all the liars on the left, I don’t want to be taken by one. I’ll stick to giving to the NRA. I won’t give even $10 to a group whose ultimate goals I’m unsure of when it comes to gun rights.

        • Also, for someone who is SO busy, you do seem to want to have the same conversation with a bunch of people multiple different times in email instead of on the one website where you came to us. I mean, why on earth would you seek to “start a conversation” somewhere like TTAG if you didn’t have a couple of days sort of cleared to field questions? It seemed important enough to you to come here and try to make some sort of statement to us and make sure we knew about your organization?

          If you just recently filed certain forms and there is nothing publicly available for us to see yet… why wouldn’t you have waited to come over here and talk to us until after you got that done. Did you think you’d be met with no skepticism at all?

          Every comment you’ve made has been very thin on your values with regards to guns.

          I may come across as picking on you. And you may be genuinely innocent of any ill intentions with regards to the rights of gun owners. But your manner of communicating here leads me not to trust you or your organization. Now that might mean you are untrustworthy or it might be a personal flaw of mine.

          But you talk about innovative and creative ways to discuss gun safety through social media. Retweeting Bloomberg is innovative and creative? It certainly is “unusually” to privatize your tweet stream. Maybe that’s a strategy that’s over my head. Twitter and Facebook, etc. haven’t exactly been innovative in about ten years. And if you want to innovate with gun safety “itself”… well the basics of gun safety don’t change for a reason. Innovate too much and you start adding a bunch of steps that make no sense and cause the safety reflexes we try to ingrain to break down. Or did you mean come up with “innovative safety requirements for guns and gun storage which will be put into law because we all agreed about safety and responsibility?”

    • I checked Charitynavigator as well. I was curious if someone else might have been able to find out their political leanings with regards to guns. In my mind the stakes are just too high to give any aide to any gun-related group who won’t share their political views re: my gun rights. If you want to be involved in guns in a non-profit capacity, you have to be willing to pony up what side of the fence you’re on. Otherwise, I might be financially supporting a group intent on the destruction of my rights. Let me think about that. Um… no.

    • Didn’t you hear? She’s hard at work with gun “safety ambassadors” (that even she put quotes around!) That’s serious bizness. How dare you question the seriousness of that.

        • The fact that you put it in scare quotes lets me know exactly what you think about me. But it’s really pretty mutual. I don’t want to have “conversations” with people who can’t be up front about their values and politics on highly political issues they supposedly want to champion in apolitical ways. And I still can’t believe you were given a platform from which to speak without even so much of a disclaimer to the rest of us.

    • We share a lot of things from many sources. As does this site and many others. But we don’t engage in politics as most people familiar with us know. But mostly we try to share information about things that could have been avoided.

      • What you don’t engage in is transparency about your political views re: gun rights, which isn’t going to win you friends and financial donors in the gun community. It doesn’t mean you are actually “bad”. The point is we don’t “know”, and you do little weird thing after little weird thing that just makes me think you are a slightly more sophisticated MDA. People who donate to charities and get involved with them are becoming more and more savvy. I don’t give to any group with less than a 3 out of 4 star rating on Charity Navigator. (And if they have that 3, it better be because they are failing in a few areas that are NOT the area of transparency which is separately rated.) For me, you’re failing on transparency.

      • I’m sorry Rebecca, but back when your twitter feed was open to the public you appeared to be pretty ‘hard-core anti-gun’, so it is difficult for me to see your organization as anything other than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

        Maybe if you shared more things regarding the NRA Eddie Eagle program and other actual gun safety programs you might be more believable, but I would probably still be suspicious.

        • But that would ruin her mastermind plan to convince people she invented gun safety and saved the gun nuts from themselves because obviously we’re just waving our guns everywhere with our fingers inside the trigger guard because we’re idiot yokels. We were smart enough to see through her in under half an hour. Maybe she should rethink our supposed idiocy.

  13. Of course we should all encourage firearms safety at every possible opportunity.

    As for drawing attention to negligent discharges, I have a hard time with that. The author hailed the virtue of pilots and safety organizations who discuss and try to learn from plane crashes. I doubt that pilots and safety organizations would discuss plane crashes so openly if a well funded group of people and many politicians were trying to ban flying.

    • Understood. But there can be a place where the politics is stripped from the conversation and we can have a conversation about what people do agree on: safe practices and preventing the avoidable.

  14. This is a little off-topic, but I have my doubts about whether Rutledge’s shooting occurred as the news has described it. I suspect the pistol was just laying in the purse. If someone had seen the tot extracting the gun from its carry pocket in the purse, presumably this person would have stopped the tot. Since the tot was not stopped, then, presumably, no one saw what happened prior to the shooting. What has been reported — the tot unzipped the carry pouch and removed the gun — seems like nothing more than what Rutledge’s family hopes happened.

    I also saw a comment on this site that suggested Rutledge may have tried to grab the gun out of the tot’s hand, causing a trigger pull. That sounds reasonable to me. The gun was some sort of M&P. Those triggers are not particularly light.

    To circle back to safety, I have a young child. My loaded firearms are semi-automatic pistols. I carry on body or keep them locked up without a round in the chamber and (if one exists) the safety on. Off body access is tough for both of us. It’s my choice, and I’ll be making it until he’s old enough to handle a gun himself.

    • Anxiously looking forward to a detailed report on this one.

      None of the reports I’ve read indicate that the tot “drew” the weapon and pointed it at his mother. I also have a hard time picturing a 2 YO being able to do that and pull a 5-6 lb. trigger.

      My suspicion is that he managed to pull the trigger while the piece was still in the purse. I’m thinking that her rig provided enough friction/tension on the gun, against which junior could have worked the trigger.

    • An article I found on Google from a newspaper in the NW (sorry, I forgot to get the citation) said the weapon was a Smith and Wesson M&P Shield in 9mm, and that the victim was shot in the head. Grisly if the child did it. I tried a 9mm Shield at a rental range and thought it was a phenomenal gun, which I probably would have bought had one been available for sale. My recollection is that it had a short, light trigger, unfortunately making it easier for the kid to discharge. I checked a photo on the S&W web site and it sure looks like it has a safety, which, if the woman was as experienced as her family said she was, would have been on. I still cannot comprehend a 2 year old being physically and intellectually able to release the safety, hold the gun and pull the trigger, but they are certainly precocious and this is the age by which you are supposed to have all the cabinets with medicines, corrosives, sharps, certainly guns. locked up. We had the locks on everything as soon as our daughter could crawl across the kitchen floor but she always got in my wife’s purse. All kids do this. It is sad and I hope all parents and grandparents of small children will carefully consider and reconsider their gun carry and storage situations.

      • Not all Shields have safeties, although they do have a hinged trigger safety (mostly for drop safety)

  16. I thought some of this sounded odd, as in not at all what I have been seeing first hand with regard to gun owners and gun manufacturers addressing safety. Then I got to the bottom and saw this, “Rebecca Bond is the founder of Evolve.” Now it makes sense why this is still trying to blame the gun community.

    • This is actually the first time I’d heard of “Evolve.”

      I just skimmed (very briefly) their website.

      What specifically is your beef with them?

      • From the very start they’ve been an anti-gun group, they had to do a reboot of the group because they weren’t discrete enough about it at the beginning.

        This article is a perfect example of their shtick, according to them, we gun owners are “dumbasses” and are not proactively involved in the topic of gun safety. So they need to be the ‘third way” to come in, talk down to us, and tell us how to be safe.

        • We are not anti-gun. We try very hard to be transparent and talk with anyone who wants to talk with us. Writing about us is not talking with us. If you would like to learn more, or speak with someone at Evolve, send us an email. We would love to hear from you.

        • Got any links to support that, Gun_Chris?

          I’ll look into Evolve further, but I will say right out front, I have been around more than my share of dumba$$ gun-owners, and I definitely cotton to the idea of the gun culture policing itself, even at the risk of ruffling the feathers of a friend or relative.

          If we inadvertently hurt any feelings, all we should have to is ask them, “You remember Veronica Rutledge, don’t you? No? Let me tell you about her …”

        • Gun_Chris:

          Looked further. Found this:

          ““Gun Control” Messages ‘Evolve’,” by David Codrea
          http://gunsmagazine.com/exclusive-gun-control-messages-evolve/

          Like Arte Johnson’s Kraut soldier used to say on Laugh-In, “Veeeeeery interesting …”

          Mrs. Bond:

          Does Evolve have an official position on civilians carrying handguns in public for self defense?

          If not, do you have an unofficial one?

          And do you have any response to Mr. Codrea’s article, linked above?

        • @ Frank, of particular interest: “Clearly what’s needed is a group that doesn’t carry such baggage, at least openly, and conveniently, one is rising to the fore, enjoying publicity from such disinterested parties as Piers Morgan and The New York Times. They call themselves Evolve Together, Inc., and they represent themselves as the “third voice … in the gun debate.” That alone should raise red flags, as the “third way” movement has its roots in “social democracy.” In other words, “compromise” means ceding to the left.

          The group says it started around a kitchen table, founded after Newtown by Rebecca and Jon Bond of Greenwich Village, a “branding expert” who worked as a marketing consultant and an “advertising executive” respectively. They admit they knew nothing about guns, so who better to presume to lecture the rest of us?”

          ***

          So, yeah.

        • Rebecca: “We try very hard to be transparent and talk with anyone who wants to talk with us.”

          Try harder.

  17. “Shouldn’t we dig deep enough to find the remedy as well as the cause of the tragedy?”

    The fact is some people just do a poor job of risk assessment. We say “shit happens” and it was an unfortunate event. Others are just adept at seeing the possible consequences of actions and naturally take steps to avoid unfortunate outcomes. We then call them the lucky ones. Situational awareness and risk assessment can be taught, but it must be practiced everyday to become a natural behavior. We all follow certain patterns in our lives and it’s the changes that throw us off. This woman had only had that concealment purse for a few days, she hadn’t really assessed that it was inadequate for secure storage around a two year old.

  19. Hayden is about 30 minutes up the road from us. When I heard the first news reports last week, I pictured in my mind that this poor woman was the poster child for the “People of Walmart” website — dimwitted, half a set of teeth, four grubby kids in tow, with her $100 Hi-Point 9mm flopping around inside her canvas, single-compartment Duck Dynasty purse/duffel.

    Had all my prejudicial assumptions been true, the story would be no less tragic — and its lessons would be no less applicable to me. But none if them were true. Quite the opposite, in fact. Rutledge was highly intelligent and a published scientist, and both her and her husband’s families were deeper into the gun culture than I’ve ever been.

    I’ve done a couple of stupid things with guns in my younger days (about twenty years ago) — thankfully, without even so much as an unintentional discharge or anyone suggesting that the police be called. I’d like to think that I learned from those stupidities. But then along comes a story like Veronica Rutledge’s.

    No, I’m not contemplating getting rid of my guns, or no longer carrying concealed. (I had fallen into “safety complacency” shortly after moving up here from AZ, but I’ve carried virtually every day since 12/14/12.)

    But I am going to sit down with my wife, sons and daughters-in-law, and have an open, honest discussion and assessment of our “gun habits,” with a cold, critical eye toward improving them wherever necessary.

    • Make sure you pass on that the stereotypical redneck from North Idaho doesn’t apply anymore.. it will go a long way when we venture down to Spokane to get cultured;)

      • Just so you know, my stereotyping was due to two things: 1. She was in Walmart; and 2. the nature of the accident.

        I shop at Walmart myself, but still … “People of Walmart”? Lot of truth to that website!

        And while I’m nowhere near as academically accomplished as was Rutledge, I’m of above intelligence.

        As far as my impression of northern ID, not to worry. While I see my share of hicks and rubes, it’s on both sides of the state line, and it’s not a majority by far.

        Furthermore, when we moved up here, we pulled into a Jack in the Box for lunch, must have been in CdA, and the first thing we laid eyes on when we walked in there was a handsome young white guy holding hands and a lovely young black girl, holding hands and eating lunch.

        (Which simply served to reinforce my hopes that northern ID wasn’t crawling with a bunch of Richard Butler wanna-bes!)

  20. “Playthings” video == OMG! Hahahahahahahahaha…*thud to floor, holding chest*

    *whimper*

    *giggle*

  21. Don’t know what to make of Evolve, but concealed carry is sufficiently popular that it is now time to have a ‘Concealed Carry Institute’. It should research and propagate best practices, possibly developing course material as well.

  22. Ms Bond:

    We have been hearing about Evolve for quite a while now, and how you want a “conversation”. Certainly nothing on your website strikes me as anti-gun per se. However, what does strike me as odd is that despite your insistence on the importance of a conversation, you don’t seem terribly interested in starting it. Nowhere on your site do I find any helpful suggestions, tips, practices, etc. Nor do I find links to existing safety programs, or case studies with analysis of how safety practices could have helped avoid a tragedy. What I do see is a donate button, with no description of how that money would be used. If you really want a conversation, a little transparency and a willingness to be the first to start “the conversation” would be a good first step.

    • Thanks for your feedback. It’s helpful and instructive. We are working with a team of gun ‘safety ambassadors’ who will write about safety. We will also have resources on our site for safety options and ‘go-to’ sources. What should be abundantly clear by how is that we are not backed by billionaires and we rely on the hearts and brains of volunteers willing to pitch in. We are never able to have enough money or resources to do all that we would like to do, when would like to do it. And we have never suggested even slightly that we replace any of the current safety efforts. We applaud and support them. And we promote them on our social channels. There is no reason to not have more safety messaging that does not involve politics. It’s good for everyone. Anyone who can help us from the gun community, we welcome them. If you or anyone sends an email or phone number to our website, we will respond. Thank you.

  23. I have my own opinions (many of which have been stated by others all over the internet already) about all the coulda woulda shoulda’s of the situation. What upsets me is that when I first saw the original story (My first exposure to the story was once the toddler had been introduced, not the earlier iterations where nobody knew anything but that a woman was shot in a walmart)… but what upsets me is… I saw the story headlines and the FIRST thought in my mind was: “Oh great, the liberals will use that to try to take away gun rights.”

    That makes me livid. I didn’t at that moment feel any empathy for the woman or her situation. Upon reflection, of course it’s terrible and tragic. But due to the left’s insistence of playing this way where they politicize every tragedy and pretend they are doing it out of caring, little bits of my humanity are being stripped away. Because I would have had the empathy response immediately (instead of days later) if it weren’t for the immediate feeling of threats to my own rights to protect myself.

  24. Aside from what the actual stance of Ms Bond and “Evolve” is, could she written a post in something that didn’t read like politician style gibberish?

    • I respectfully disagree with you calling it ‘political gibberish’, but let’s set that aside…what are your other topic areas around safety that you would like to read about?

      • …what are your other topic areas around safety that you would like to read about?

        Hospital safety? Automobile safety? Pool safety? Ladder safety? Household chemicals safety? All of those things pose a greater demonstrated risk to people – and especially to children – than firearms.

        Regarding firearms safety and safe firearm handling, we need to stay the course. What we’re doing is working, and is working quite well. There is a point of diminishing returns on additional investment. If you want to help make children safer, consider the above topics.

        If your objective is to help further normalize the lawful practice of keeping and bearing arms? There is certainly fertile ground to be found there.

        • Agreed. But when it comes to gun safety and children and such, I do think the NRA could be doing a better job making sure the “general public” KNOWS their contributions to firearms safety. Not to denigrate what Ms. Bond is doing but one of the biggest things the anti-gun folks use to sway people in the middle/on the fence is that the NRA is a terrible monster organization and cares nothing for the safety of the children! (cue ominous music from Frontline hit piece.)

          There will always be someone who isn’t yet educated on firearms safety so what Ms. Bond and others are trying to do is great, but if they are the only ones who gain visibility then they start looking like some “outside people coming to save the gun people from themselves”. Since they don’t/won’t talk about politics, we don’t actually know where they REALLY stand. Maybe they are pro-2A, but there have been enough liberals couching their agenda in “common sense” and “reasonable” and “safety” that we have a reason/right to be a little suspicious. What we need is not to allow new groups to do all our speaking for us. Let the NRA speak and make LOUD obvious education about gun safety so that no one has any excuse to think the NRA isn’t concerned about that, and let’s not muddy the waters wonder if Ms. Bond has an agenda or not beyond actual safety.

          Also co-signed on the other safety stuff. All that crap is way more dangerous to children when it comes to numbers of children actually harmed than firearms. So one wonders why there is so much attention on this one thing.

        • That was a ‘gotcha’ question. But ok. Meanwhile, please email me if you do have ideas about gun safety or I’m happy to talk with you about what we’re doing.

        • If you think he asked a “gotcha” question, why aren’t you answering it? Why do you want everyone to email you privately? Are you afraid you’ll slip up in public? I don’t know… I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but both from rereading your article, and reading a lot of the comments, and just in general the condescending title of the article as if nobody was talking about safety until you graced us with your presence… something feels off here. Maybe you are 100% sincere and not in any way trying to undermine gun rights or add more gun control legislation. Maybe you truly do have “apolitical” goals (whatever that means). But maybe you don’t. Given the high level of deceit that has come from the left as they continue to try to be more and more sophisticated and tricking people to join their side (since honesty: “we want to take the guns” gets them nowhere), there kind of now is a bar of trust you have to meet now. Your continued insistence that everybody email you privately and all your public relations friendly replies leave me a bit leery. Again, you could be totally innocent, but please understand you wouldn’t be the first person to pretend you aren’t trying to take away gun rights just so you can gain more support for a cause that will take away gun rights. I’m sure you’ll understand when I send my donations to the NRA (who has safety programs I would be contributing to) instead of to your group which could have any political agenda at all despite denial to the contrary.

      • I respectfully disagree with you calling it ‘political gibberish’, but let’s set that aside…

        Let’s not.

        “But let’s set that aside” is right out of the politician/PR flack playbook. It’s called a bridge, and it’s used to allow someone to evade a direct question and “bridge” to his/her talking points. Which, in Ms. Bond’s case, appear to be well-scripted so as to avoid scrutiny.

        Ms. Bond, you may very well have good intentions, and I sincerely hope you do. I also sincerely hope that your aim is to protect gun rights by building up an organization that appears reasonable and neutral, one that can attract the attention of the mainstream media because it is not “tainted” by an affiliated with the NRA or any of the other gun groups that have been widely labeled as extremist, paranoid and unreasonable. (I get that — it’s a smart move for anti-gun hysterics to use, labeling your opponent as a fringe/extremist group.)

        Perhaps you could “set aside” your talking points and noncommittal answers and respond directly to some of the questions and concerns TTAG’s members have posted. As a marketing professional, you ought to be very capable of making yourself understood and writing/speaking with clarity.

        Doing so would go a long way toward earning the trust of members of the gun community who have worked so long and hard on safety. Unlike, as others have noted, those who seek to ban guns but want nothing to do with measures that would (actually) increase safety.

        By the way, the title of your essay is “Let’s Shift the Topic to (Actual) Gun Safety.” So for starters, you could define what that means and clarify — specifically — how Evolve aims to achieve it.

        • I don’t think she can talk about that without us figuring out she’s not so apolitical after all. I’m 99% sure the ultimate end game is more “common sense gun laws”.

          Um yeah, no thanks.

  25. Look for a copy of the woman’s tweet about the Santa Barbara shooter. It’s typical leftist crap that we always hear — blame-shifting the criminal acts of an individual onto the gun industry.

    You’ll have to find a cached version because her Twitter timeline is only available to those who seek and are blessed with her approval to read it.

    • Better yet: send me an email and I will write you back or call. No conspiracy theory here. And if you are a social media wiz – or just have an interest in campaigns about gun safety – we are always looking for good content AND great ways to talk about it. Thank you.

      • If you have a message you feel passionate about getting out to people, why is your timeline on twitter privatized? That seems counter-intuitive to the objectives you claim.

        • No thank you. I don’t do Twitter. I feel like you’re a stranger in a van with candy trying to lure me away from the group. “Follow me on Twitter and we can talk.” “Send me a private email and we can talk”. “Leave your community and come over here with me to this dark corner. It’s safe I promise.”

          Dude, just have a conversation here, where the conversation is. If you can’t do that, your evasion just adds more reasons to be suspicious of you. Why would you bring your little PSA over here to post on this site under the guise of wanting to start a conversation, then respond to everything with very careful public relations talk, and an urge for us to follow you to some alternate location to talk.

          Talk here, where we can all decide if you’re being straight with us.

    • You can dissect a tweet, but after that, send me an email and I will write you back or call. Our agenda is pretty clear at this point. And if you are a social media wiz – or just have an interest in making more great campaigns about gun safety – we are always looking for good content AND ways to share it. We are trying to get better at what we do, not spend all of our time jousting about incorrect theories about our intentions. We are non-profit; funded by family, friends and people who care enough to send in $10 or $25; have smart and caring creative people who show up and make stuff without getting paid; we do not pay anyone a salary. That’s the ‘business model.’ Thank you.

      • Okay you just “stating” your agenda is clear doesn’t make it a fact. I can tell you I’m CEO and president of a major steel company, but without actual evidence, I’m just talking.

        Others have pointed out that on your website there is no real effort to acknowledge anybody ELSE’S contribution already to gun safety. (As if gun safety is something you just invented for the first time ever.) You’ve just got a donate button with no clue as to where that money is going. You respond with the fact that you are talking to gun “safety ambassadors”. (Whatever the hell those are).

        Then you want us to follow you on twitter or send you an email. Seriously, you brought the conversation here. TALK HERE. Address people’s questions and issues HERE. If you really are who/what you say you are with no agenda that would be harmful for the type of folks who frequent TTAG, then you benefit more by reaching more people with your thoughts and views on a large website like this. Of what benefit is it to you to NOT use this platform for that discussion but to instead try to have 140 character pity saying conversations or private email discussions with people? It makes more sense to address things directly in view of everyone. Unless you have things to hide and don’t want to be caught/called on it in full view on a popular website.

      • Also, a great way to not have “incorrect theories about your intentions” is for you not to try to lure everybody off the website like a stranger in a van in candy and stop acting so squirrelly. It also might have helped not to have a post on a major gun site that started in the title with the arrogant assumption that nobody started talking about safety until you showed up. Again, I’ll be donating my money to the NRA, a group whose intentions I’m actually sure about and who has a proven track record.

        Given also, that by definition gun stuff is a political issue, your refusal to let us know whether you support full gun rights or gun control or some weasle space in the middle makes many of us leery to want to donate or participate in a group whose goals aren’t clear.

        You say you are transparent, but apolitical discussions about guns are impossible in our current climate so your unwillingness to say where you fall politically with regards to gun ownership is the opposite of transparent.

      • One last thing here… “gun safety”, in case you didn’t know, is becoming a liberal anti-gun “dog whistle”. Sort of like “common sense gun laws”. It’s hilarious to me how the anti gun people used to just flat out call their organizations things that made it clear they were for civilian disarmament. But then they had to start shifting to “preventing gun violence” and “common sense gun laws” and now the softest of the super soft sells: “gun safety”. (Next it’s going to have to be saying you are pro-gun and pretending to be and then having a second group underneath the first group where you have secret meetings with the people at the inner circle secret level to discuss the real agenda.)

        Maybe you haven’t been in this climate long enough yet to realize that many of us see “gun safety” with no real indications of support of gun rights… and that’s a red flag.

        Not being transparent about your views re: gun rights… red flag.

        Just come follow me on twitter or email you and I’ll tell you everything… red flag.

        Ignoring earlier requests for public records re: your organization that would give us financial information that would let us know more about your ties… red flag. (And you definitely ignored the request because you responded to the poster in some evasive friendly PR-talk while ignoring the requests.)

        Not being on Charity Navigator… red flag.

  27. Rebecca, one thing you have to consider with the anti-gun side is that many of them don’t want gun safety. They want to ban guns.

    If they actually wanted gun safety, given the pro-government slant that many of them have, they would be pushing for mandatory gun safety education for all children in elementary & high school, and perhaps discounted gun safety courses for adults at community colleges. But that’s not what they want. That’s not even close to what they want. They want to ban guns and destroy the gun culture. And so they don’t push for actual gun safety. They push for restrictions and prohibitions, and for as many of them as they can politically get away with.

    Getting more people educated with gun safety actually hurts the anti-gun side, because it teaches people that weapons are under the control of people, and they are not some magical evil entity that goes around killing anyone who touches one. The problem isn’t guns – it’s people abusing or misusing them. The goal of many of them appears to be to destroy the gun culture and rid the world of firearms entirely. Teaching gun safety hurts that goal.

    As Ralph said, those of us in the gun culture don’t want politics to have anything to do with this. We’re trying to get politics OUT of the gun culture. It’s the anti-gun folks who keep attempting to force their way upon everyone.

    As others have mentioned, there is LOTS of discussion regarding gun safety within the gun community. The NRA and NSSF both promote gun safety (and teach many to do the same), and there are discussions all over the place when a bad incident takes place (e.g. Tex Grebner’s SERPA incident, as Rokurota mentioned). Just because some folks – and much of the media – choose to ignore it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

    • Thanks for your candid thoughts. We agree with you. People try to drag us into the political discussion and we are not interested in that either. We support the safety efforts of the industry organizations. Follow our site and that is pretty obvious. But we do have pretty strong opinions on ‘avoidable’ shootings. And so do most responsible gun owners and industry folks. We want to make more campaigns that talk to more people. In ADDITION to what’s already being done. No one in the for-profit or non-profit world ever has enough marketing resources for responsibility campaigns, but everyone cares about them. So if we can add to what is already being done, what’s bad about that?

      • Nothing. If that’s your genuine intention. And it might be. It also might not be. At this point, I’d prefer not to risk it, thanks. Particularly when it makes greater sense for BOTH gun safety education AND my rights to support one big organization with the power and clout to get things done like the NRA as opposed to a start-up (however high-minded their intentions “could” be). This just isn’t a hard decision for me.

        hmmm do I put all my gun-related donation eggs into the basket I know is powerful, can get the job done, and I have no doubt about their commitment to my rights?

        Or do I give some or all of my donation dollars to an organization whose intentions are unclear because they are “claiming” to have no political goals, and who has no proven track record.

        I know everyone has to start somewhere, but the best place for YOU to start is transparency on where you stand re: gun rights.

        You say people keep trying to drag you into political discussion and make you state your politics. There is good reason for that. Don’t expect them to stop. People of the Gun are not the stupid yokels some seem to think we are. For me… transparency is knowing where you stand on my gun rights. Evasiveness is saying: “We’re apolitical, why does everybody want me to discuss my politics on an issue that is obviously politically charged and can be no other way.”

        Good luck with that.

        • Hi Summer, well it is our intention. We have stated it openly in forums that are not always as welcoming as they could be. We are committed to campaigns that promote safety and responsibility that talks to all kinds of gun owners in this country. Someone buys a gun, we want them to be judicious about their safety education and handling choices. We want people to talk about this all the time.

          As far as which basket you put your eggs in, well, that is your choice. I don’t believe one basket can cover it. We need a lot of them. We can never have too many great campaigns. And even then, it will never be full-covered because of human nature. And that is why I wrote a check to NSSF Project Childsafe. I support their work. And Eddie Eagle. And Evolve’s and any other lock company, manufacturer, or retailer who wants to beat this drum.

          I think that answers most of your questions. What wasn’t specifically answered is certainly implied by our work and much of what I have written in response to others. As I said, feel free to write to our site. I’m happy to correspond or speak on the telephone anytime. Whether you support our work or not, I appreciate that you obviously care about safety and will support these important efforts being done by others. Thank you.

        • I hope your intentions are actually not against gun rights, but like i said, I really don’t know and have no reason to trust you. There has been enough doubt in multiple places. You’ve even alluded to it both here and in articles you’ve posted elsewhere on the internet like HuffPo. (Which itself leans liberal left.) Others have questioned motives and put you in dog whistle category. Things you say come off pretty evasive (whether that’s the intention or not).

          My only question is: where do you personally stand politically on gun rights? That’s it. And if you can’t answer that question in public, then that’s problematic. And if you would answer it in private, what makes you think I and anyone else who asked you wouldn’t just tell other people what you said?

          I know you claim to want to have a conversation between both sides on the stuff we agree on: “gun safety and responsibility” but your approach seems to be to ride in like you are here to educate the educated on a subject you’re admittedly still pretty new to. Given that a shooting helped instigate your group, I’m doubting you’re a gun enthusiast.

          Most gun owners actually ARE very safe. Compared to all other safety issues such as household cleaners, swimming pool accidents, etc.

          The truth is there is no real conversations to be had between “both sides” because it will never STOP at gun safety. If you are on the left and support any level of gun control (which I seriously suspect that you do, and you’d have to climb over a pretty high wall at this point to prove otherwise), then it might be nice that you can come over here and talk about “what we agree on”, but for me, you can’t be trusted on basic principle if you aren’t staunchly for gun rights.

          If you were genuinely politically for more gun control or “common sense gun laws” or extra “gun safety laws”, there is a point past which there is no communication and you are for something I am actively against (more laws and restrictions on my inalienable constitutional rights).

          If you’re on the left… you basically either have to STOP at the point where it won’t encroach on my rights or you have to keep going either loudly or quietly behind the scenes to accomplish further goals.

          There is just no discussion. Pro gun people are already SERIOUS about safety and always have been. And anti-gun people don’t really care about safety they just want guns gone. They SAY it’s about safety but there is no level of safety that is safe enough for them because they don’t genuinely believe in the second amendment.

          I’ll take my safety advice and talk from people who I KNOW I can trust on this stuff. If you have genuinely good intentions and NO desire to help enact ANY additional law that restricts gun owner’s rights in any way… then I wish you luck in your endeavors. And if you do have something to hide, you’ll make a big enough mistake eventually that we will all find you out about it with no doubt, and it will weaken the anti-gun people even more and make the wall of trust that much higher for others after you to attempt to breech.

  28. “The airline industry, and even individual pilots are fine describing a crash as ‘pilot error’, and more importantly, using the ‘learning’ to avoid future disasters. We find no issue in placing responsibility for the majority of fatal auto crashes on the driver. It is usually NOT the machine, but the operator of the machine who is at fault. As they say in the military, there is no such thing as ‘accidental discharge.’ ”

    The comparison of the gun issue to the auto and airline industry depicted here is does not follow. When car or plane crashes are explained as being the result of “pilot error”, the individuals explaining the crashes, are not desperately trying to prevent the total banning of the last cars and planes from society. The discussion of gun safety always becomes a political one. Because, unlike everything else in our society that is dangerous and ubiquitous, for half of society gun safety is very simple: Take them all away, then there is no safety issue. As long as that political view is the sole argument of the anti-gun side there can be no constructive dialog.

    • This. Also, I’m pretty sure that we DO admit when a gun owner has been foolish/irresponsible/unsafe with their gun. Frequently. And everybody dresses them down and tells them what an idiot they are. I’m not sure why this article is written as if nobody in the gun community is willing to admit any errors of individual gun users. Because that’s not what’s happening. And it further convinces me that the author is from “the other side” of the issue. Nobody on our side could possibly be ignorant to how we deal with people’s gun irresponsibility.

  29. Not sure why this woman would think I’d have any interest whatsoever in corresponding with her, either via email or telephone. But that was her response to me above, while ignoring the part about her blaming the Santa Barbara shooting on the gun industry.

    • But don’t you want candy? In her nice shiny van? Come on, it’s CANDY!!! Who could resist this offer?

  30. From Evolve’s “Code”:

    “I will keep all of my guns unloaded, locked and properly stored when not in use.”

    Um, no.

    There is a reason why the Supreme Court, in its Heller decision, found the D.C. law mandating trigger locks to be unconstitutional. Such a requirement makes it impossible for homeowners to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense.

    Is the notion of keeping guns in the home unloaded, locked and properly stored a good idea in most cases? Yes, particularly when young children are present. But we do not live in a one-size-fits-all world. Everyone who owns guns for home defense must balance safety against accessibility.

    I live way out in the country on an isolated lot in the woods. It’s in an area that has had its share of home invasions over the last few years — more than one would expect in such a rural setting. My wife and I have no children living at home. No grandchildren that come to visit. It’s just her and me. We both own handguns and long guns and they stay loaded and accessible at all times. The only time they are locked in the safe is when she and I leave the homestead.

    So, while the bullet-pointed code fits nicely on the webpage with the American flag as the backdrop, no, I don’t subscribe to that particular one-size-fits-all part of The Code.

  31. I think the fact that Mrs. Bond is here, responding to comments and trying to connect with us, should show that she isn’t an MDA type who refuses to engage with people on our side.

    • Sorry, but it shows no such thing. We have had rabid anti’s here, sometimes astro-turfing.

      Her unwillingness to acknowledge the existing safety culture and its effectiveness is a red flag. I’m willing to be swayed, but she’s going to have to offer up a little more “humble” on the subject and stop with this “gun safety ambassadors” horse snot and similar nonsense before I will even begin to take her as genuine in what she claims.

      • And that’s not the only red flag. I also find it weird and suspicious that supposedly the paperwork for the non-profit (which would allow us access to public records on it) have JUST been filed. Even though people have been talking about “Evolve” since 2013.

    • She hasn’t engaged honestly with any of us. Not once. The most she has attempted is “damage control” with some of the louder people like me and some others. It’s not engaging to try to get us to leave the site and go call her, email her, follow her on twitter. It’s pretty weird behavior for someone who is supposedly so honest. She privatized her twitter, which according to several here was filled with anti-gun talk before she made it private. But just making your twitter privatized when you have such a supposedly important message for everyone is about 1,000 shades of suspicious.

      She won’t honestly express her politics about guns. Claiming you want to have an apolitical neutral group where both sides can come together on points they agree on does NOT mean you have to evade questions about where you actually stand on that issue. In fact, transparency on the issue would make her more trustworthy even if people decided they didn’t want to risk working with her.

      She claimed to me that publicly available non-profit documents weren’t available yet because they just filed the paperwork. Well, that’s super convenient since people have been talking about her group on the internet since 2013.

      I could go on.

      • Summer, I have more than engaged with you, so that is an erroneous statement. You are welcome to engage with us on our site, or not. But we have always been open to going to everyone’s preferred turf.

        To settle this suspicious red herring you threw out about our tax filings, let’s just clear that up. We produced our first PSAs in 2014. All money raised was in 2014. In fact, someone sent us a fairly large check in 2013 and we could not cash it because we were not set up properly, and we follow the rules of non-profit governance to the letter. We received our 501c3 in 2014. I assume that you are familiar with non-profits – it is upon raising money, securing status and spending money that one then files a tax return. Which must now occur during the first quarter of this year.

        All of our taxes will be filed with the state when they are supposed to and anyone is free to look them up. And we should definitely then join Charity Navigator because it is a wonderful tool for non-profit exposure and hopefully raising money to do good work. Thanks.

        • No, you haven’t “engaged” with me. You REFUSE to answer the only question I care about, which is… “Where do you stand on my freaking gun rights?”

          You’ve hemmed and hawwed and asked us to follow you on twitter or email you or call you. Lady, you are just not that central to my life. If you want to come here and start blabbering on, then you need to not waste our time by trying to drag us off site to engage with you elsewhere. You need to address things HERE head on, and you need to be honest and transparent about your politics on gun rights. Even if the goals of your group are apolitical, it’s complete bullshit to expect people who cherish their constitutional rights to just go along with that while not being willing to even share what your personal view is.

          You don’t get to ask people for money and support while not answering ANY concern they have honestly.

          Also re: the “suspicious red herring”, You were talked about on TTAG in October of 2013 with regards to someone who was joining ranks with you guys. If you are really just now getting your act together with the proper non-profit filing, wow. Just another reason to not touch your organization with a ten-foot pole. I’m sorry that you don’t like people being skeptical of you and your motives and questioning you. Cry me a river.

  32. Rebecca, here’s a suggestion.

    If you really want to promote gun safety, why don’t you just simply use your time and talent to produce PSA’s for the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program? On your dime, as a ‘donation?’ Buy TV spots for the kind of responsible gun handling that actual gun handlers use and practice every day.

    Why split the discussion? Why have folks who want to learn about gun safety have to look in fifty-eleven different places to good information?

    You are the newcomer to the ‘gun safety’ discussion…this stuff has been around for many, many, many years. Gun safety is not some new thing that you just thought of…nor is getting the word out about it some new thing you just thought of.

    There are EXISTING programs…effective ones. HELP THEM. Don’t split the message further.

    In short, we don’t NEED “Evolve” with its own brand of messaging. What we need is facts disseminated, and there are existing channels for that. Bolster those channels, don’t seek to drive traffic away from them.

    • I’m extremely curious to know how this post got onto TTAG in the first place, seemingly endorsed by the person who in October of 2013 had a very different view of “Evolve” as a “false flag group”. I’d like to know if his view has changed and if so why. It might be beneficial to see that thought process because from everything I’ve seen as well as the evasiveness engaged in in the comments section by Ms. Bond, I’m pretty sure the original instinct about Evolve was the correct one.

    • It’s true, the Eddie Eagle program could use a boost. The video material is clearly very old, also not as easy to find on the NRA website as one would expect given the importance and immediacy of the issue.

      OK, that’s being polite. No eagle should ever have to wear a pink sweater, Officer Annoying Orange is clearly a suck up that no kid would respect, and our hero Eddie? What, was Foghorn Leghorn offshored to the Perdue plant that day?

  33. How insightful and eloquent, and BS. If she had a knife instead of a gun, if she hadn’t chambered a round, if she had kept the gun on her, then this wouldn’t have happened. It is in fact all about the gun, and all the rest is worthless fluff and smoke.

  34. Gun Talk 2/23/14: Tom Gresham talks with Rebecca Bond, founder of “Evolve”
    http://guntalk.libsyn.com/guntalk-2014-02-23-part-a

    She sounds a bit … slippery to me. Tom Raises some good points. Notably, when you’re the new kid on the block and you show up late to the party, don’t act like you invented gun safety. Acknowledge the efforts of others, maybe even throw a shoulder in to help in their efforts. Sweat alongside us. Don’t whistle us up and holler, “Yo, guys, over here! Here’s a better way than you’ve been doing it!”

    Rebecca Bond,

    In my mind, the jury’s still out. You may be who you claim to be. Being more transparent and humble, and less “slippery,” will earn you the needed “cred” among us, who have been “doing gun safety” since you were a pup.

    • EXACTLY. And yet, that all happened almost a year ago… and she is STILL using the same smug “look at me doing good!” tactic while acting like we’re all a bunch of yokels who don’t care about safety and should just be grateful she rode in to save us.

  35. The other day a driver ran her SUV the length of our parking ramp and slammed into a wall at more than 40 mph. What was the issue? Psychosis? Visual impairment? Ineptitude? Seizure? We don’t know, but we do know that such events are extremely rare. Why? Because drivers must have licenses, and to get licenses they have to demonstrate knowledge of basic safety, and they have to be tested for their physical skill in driving. Vision must be retested when licenses are renewed. Unfortunately, firearms accidents are not nearly so rare, precisely because anyone with any degree of indifference to safety can obtain a weapon.

    • …Unfortunately, firearms accidents are not nearly so rare…

      Wait, I just want to make sure I understand you correctly: are you claiming that firearms-related accidents are more frequent than automobile crashes?

      Surely you’re making some other point, and I’ve merely misunderstood you.

      • I agree. According to statistics that I was able to find through Google searches, the number of deaths per year by automobile (33,000) is roughly equal to the number of guns (32,000). The number of guns in the US is roughly equal to the population of about 315 million. There are roughly 253 million autos on the road.

        But we must put front and center the cause of death. They are not comparable. With automobiles, the vast majority of deaths are caused by accidents. With guns, it is suicides (estimated at 60%) followed by homicides (34%) and accidents 3%. So the argument posed by the writer that you responded to does not hold.

        However, there is no reason not work hard to improve gun safety because doing so will improve public confidence regarding their presence in our society. Roughly 50% of the public do not possess a gun and many, I would imagine, fear them.

        Bottom line, guns are powerful tools. And let’s be very clear, they are tools to kill. They are dangerous and must be treated accordingly with considerable respect. And they are. Accidents are rare.

        So, you might ask, why not eliminate them? Would that not reduce or eliminate killing? Unfortunately, if you read history with an open and honest mind, the answer is absolutely not. And, in fact, if you look at the 20th century, guns in the hands of citizens would have been one of the most powerful tools that prevent killings. But they did not have them. Hitler agains the Jews. Stalin against the citizens of Russia. Mao against the citizens of China. Pol Pot against the citizens of Cambodia. The countless deaths in the 10s of millions (perhaps well over 100 million in total) would not have happened if every citizen were equipped and trained on the use of firearms. Our founders knew that tyrants do not take on their own citizens if they are armed. Criminals think twice when their target is armed. Why do you think that the Colt 45 was called the “Peace Maker?”

        Please, we need to look at guns differently. We need to help our friends and fellow citizens understand their value in our society. We need to demonstrate that we fully understand that they are tools to kill and are dangerous and that we respect that through continued training and proper handling.

    • That’s what I want to know. I also want to know why Rebecca was given a platform when the SAME writer at TTAG over a year ago called Evolve a false flag group here. I mean… has his viewpoint changed? If so, maybe enlighten us. If not, what exactly is the point? Did he know that we would see right through it and the comments would be more than enough to offset anything said in the original article? I would love to know the motivations and if Evolve has gotten their hooks into the same guy who called them a false flag a little over a year ago.

  39. Thank you for spreading awareness about such an important topic. 🔐🙏 Gun safety is a critical conversation we all need to have. Let’s work together to ensure a safer and more responsible approach to firearms. 💪🤝 #GunSafetyMatters #SafetyFirst

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