Joe Bowen had worked around the country for Democratic campaigns for nearly a decade. But when he was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer some months ago, he decided that he wanted to use his skills to take the fight to the National Rifle Association in a way that no one else is doing. Deeply troubled by gun violence and the lack of serious response by elected officials, he and some friends created a new political organization last week called “End the NRA.”
“I have a background in digital work on Democratic campaigns, I know how to organize online, how to do low-dollar grassroots fundraising,” he told ThinkProgress. And the Parkland survivors’ activism inspired him put those skills to work. “Now that a group of teenagers are showing more courage than politicians, I thought it was time to get involved.”
Last Tuesday, End the NRA registered with the Federal Election Commission as a “Carey Committee” — a hybrid super PAC that has a separate traditional PAC. It can raise unlimited sums of money for independent expenditures and can raise limited sums of money to directly fund political candidates. This PAC’s “singular focus,” according to the mission statement listed on its EndTheNRA.org website, “is to make the lives of the NRA’s leadership, board members, and high-profile supporters a living hell.”
Bowen told ThinkProgress that he once managed the campaign for a Democratic candidate who sought and received the NRA’s endorsement. “I had to write a press release. I could feel my soul leaving my body,” he recalled. Even with the endorsement, the candidate narrowly lost. “The next morning she said, “the NRA thing… wasn’t worth it.” But, he notes, too many politicians are beholden to the people who were “willing to spend more than $50 million on elections in 2016.”
End the NRA will be different from the major groups in the gun violence prevention movement in that they will not strive for “reasonable compromises,” but to be an opposite counterweight to the NRA that can shift the middle ground. “The ‘Gunsense’ groups are pushing for centrist proposals,” Bowen said. “ People keep getting stonewalled when asking for ‘unreasonable’ things like background checks, assault weapons ban. We decided to form a group that would be a little further to the left. The NRA has never made an effort to be reasonable and neither should we.”
In that spirit, the group’s first action will be to take the fight directly to the highly paid NRA CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre. The plan is to put a billboard near his Northern Virginia home, listing the names of every mass shooting victim of the past year. Future actions will focus on naming and shaming the NRA’s leadership and the politicians who toe the line for the group.
“We’re just done with politics as usual,” the group says on its website. “And we’re done doing nothing.” If they are successful, one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies may finally have an attack dog fighting back.