State Lawmakers Have A New Strategy For Gun Reform

A group of state legislators, local politicians and nonprofits on Tuesday launched a national coalition that hopes to circumvent the congressional stalemate on gun reform by pressing for violence prevention efforts at the local level.

The coalition, Legislators for Safer Communities, aims to capitalize on the shifting politics of gun reform by focusing more attention on state legislatures, where violence prevention advocates have scored their biggest wins in recent years.

Part incubator of best practices and part national coordination committee, the coalition strives to rack up more wins while strategizing how to tailor policy goals to local realities. It supports ambitious but politically challenging reforms like banning assault-style weapons and mandating universal background checks for firearm purchases, but also sees opportunities to push lighter-lift measures that typically get less attention, like safe gun storage laws and funding community violence intervention programs.

Some of the country’s most prominent reform groups — such as Brady, Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence, Community Justice and March for Our Lives — have partnered with the coalition. It features 171 legislators from 43 states across the country, including some gun owners and lawmakers from conservative-leaning states where reform remains a contentious subject.

The coalition, which bills itself as nonpartisan but as of Tuesday included only Democratic politicians, views that broad exposure to varied political environments as a major strength.

“Each member of this organization is thinking about how to draw in these practices that other states have already deployed and start saving more lives,” Illinois state Rep.