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3 hours ago
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A new generation of young political leaders is gaining power in the US by using their personal experience with gun violence to push for reforms they say the US is ready for.
Their ascent is part of a nearly decade-long shift, from gun violence prevention being a third-rail issue in politics that was rarely spoken about on campaign trails, to one that candidates, most of them Democrats, are now running – and winning – on.
This shift is due in part to a collective exhaustion with gun violence, whether mass shootings – like the recent ones at Brown University in Rhode Island and at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia – firearms suicides or community violence, that continues to tear apart the lives of too many Americans, said Justin Pearson, a Tennessee state representative who’s running for US congress.
“It’s been an issue that has impacted my life,” Pearson, 30, said. “There was something about being a state representative and in a position, witnessing the government inactions and remembering the effects it has in my community, that pushed me to say this is an issue we need to prioritize.”
The day he was sworn in was also the day of the deadliest shooting in Tennessee history, when three children and three adults were shot and killed at the Covenant Catholic school in Nashville.
Days later, he and two other state Democrats led a protest on the house floor to call for stronger gun policy. Pearson and his colleague, Justin Jones, were expelled for the action, propelling him to national prominence. They eventually reclaimed their seats. (The third legislator, Gloria Johnson, who is white, avoided expulsion.)
Months later, in December 2024, Pearson’s brother, Timphrance Pearson, died of a self-inflected gunshot wound. It wasn’t his first experience with violent loss; just years before, his mentor Yvonne Nelson and his former classmate Larry Thorn were shot and killed in Memphis.
Pearson is running for US Congress in a primary challenge to Democratic incumbent Steve Cohen by putting gun violence at the center of his campaign platform and emphasizing the ways gun violence has affected the state’s young residents, for whom gunshot wounds are the leading cause of death, according to a report from Tennessee’s department of health.
The rise of candidates centering gun violence is also the result of the growing prevention movement across the US, which has become something of a pipeline for new candidates running for office.
Maxwell Frost, the nation’s first gen Z US representative, started off as a volunteer before becoming organizing director for March for Our Lives, the gun-safety group founded by survivors of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. Georgia representative Lucy McBath, whose son Jordan Davis was shot and killed in 2012, and Virginia governor-elect Abigail Spanberger were both volunteers with the gun-safety group Moms Demand Action before they ran for office. And Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the Parkland shooting who helped to organize the March for Our Lives student protests, recently announced his campaign to represent Manhattan, New York, in Congress.
“I see myself as a small part of a bigger movement. It’s the reason I got into politics,” Frost said. “I was 15 when Sandy Hook happened and that’s what pushed me to get involved in organizing and it’s remained a big piece of my organizing.”
Today, calling out gun-rights lobbyists and groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) is common among Democrats vying for political office. But less than 15 years ago, many moderate Democrats held A ratings from the NRA and the subject of regulating guns was a third rail that could spell an end to political aspirations, said Shannon Watts, a violence-prevention activist and founder of Moms Demand Action.
“It was gradual and not linear,” she said of the change that’s happened. “We saw that our volunteers were running for office and thought it was common sense that someone who was learning how to shape legislation would want to take the next step to make the legislation as an elected official.”
Watts marks the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school, in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults, and the subsequent failure of Congress to pass gun-safety policies, as a watershed moment that pushed formerly gun-friendly Democrats like former West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, Minnesota governor Tim Walz and former Arizona representative Ann Kirkpatrick to risk their A rating from the NRA to call for restrictions on gun-magazine capacities and assault weapons. Now, having an F rating from the group is a point of pride.
“After Parkland, zero Democratic members of Congress had an A rating and were proud about it. That’s a seismic shift,” Watts added. “I think it’s proof positive that playing the long game works. Lucy [McBath] ran for a seat held by Republicans and she ran on the issue of gun safety. It shattered a lot of misperceptions and fears about being gun safety-forward.
The issue of gun violence has also activated newcomers to politics.
Shaundelle Brooks’s son, Akilah Dasilva, was one of four people killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville Waffle House in 2018. Five years later, in 2023, another son, who survived the Waffle House shooting, was shot and injured while leaving a Nashville music venue.
After her son’s death, Brooks said she regularly would go to the statehouse to advocate for gun laws that she feels could have prevented the death of her son and so many others. After years of her pleas falling on unreceptive ears, she decided to run for office.
“There was a time where people were scared to even mention it while they were running. And I remember not voting for certain people because of that. So I am grateful that people are standing up, speaking out and being brave about it,” Brooks said.
“Coming up here for seven years and having them just ignoring me, testifying and then being told that if my son had a gun that would have saved his life, showed me that I needed to do more than what I was doing.”
The personal experiences of loss unite people like Brooks and Pearson with the scores of Americans who are part of what gun-violence victims and survivors describe as a club that no one wants to be a part of.
“When people see you’re personally impacted, they feel that you’re more credible to talk about this kind of stuff. They know it’s not a political thing for us,” she said.
Pearson said the issue of gun violence has also brought lawmakers together. “We don’t have a group chat but we all feel called in this moment to be a part of the healing,” Pearson said of Frost, McBath and Brooks.
“The world is riddled with so many problems and things that feel entrenched. We’ve given people decades to solve the issues we’ve been left with. And now, with our constituents’ support, it’s our turn,” he said.
Pearson said the loss of his brother has taught him that to tackle gun violence, he also needs to address bipartisan issues, such as veteran suicides and enhanced access to mental health services, that may have a better chance of making their way through Tennessee’s Republican supermajority. He hopes these moves can show that a lawmaker being focused on gun violence isn’t just about gun restrictions, but also requires action on material needs like economic and housing stability.
“We’re not single-issue candidates and we understand the intersectionality of the harms,” he said. “We recognize that it’s not just gun violence. It’s poverty, pollution, communities that are deprived – these are the places subjected to the highest levels of gun violence. We have to have leaders who have proximity to that pain.”
Pearson, a recent gun owner himself, says that he is running for Congress because there are policies, such as red flag laws and mandatory waiting periods before purchasing guns that he feels need to exist at the federal level – and the current leadership has yet to prove they can implement them.
“Because of that inaction, people are dying,” Pearson said. “This problem isn’t going to be solved by doing what we’ve done in the past.”
