This is the Mother Jones Podcast. I'm Jamila King in New York.

On today's show, we dig into the origins of one of the most effective gun reform groups in the country.

It's called Moms Demand Action, and it all started at our guest's kitchen table.

Shannon Watts is one of the most recognizable activists in America and not afraid to

tangle with critics on Twitter and in Congress.

In this conversation, Watts sits down with Mother Jones's editor-in-chief, Clara Jeffrey,

to discuss how this group of moms is changing America's conversation about guns

and doing it just in time to shake things up before the 2020 presidential

election. That's all coming up on the Mother Jones podcast. Stick around.

I've gotten a chance to chat with Shannon a bunch over the years and one thing that's hard to ignore

about her is her persistence. She's the person who convinced Congresswoman Lucy

Macbath to run for office after Macbeth's son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed by a man at a Florida

gas station.

Watts' dedicated group of moms has gone from the cyber streets of Facebook to the halls of Congress and beyond. They show up in red shirts and

they lobby members of Congress and they protest the ones who've opposed gun safety

legislation. They've pushed companies like Starbucks to exporting goods and others into supporting gun safety laws and to date 20 states have passed those gun safety laws, including nine with Republican governors.

Watts's new book, Fight Like a Mother,

tells the story of how she went from a stay-at-home mom

to the NRA's worst nightmare. Our editor-in-chief Clara Jeffries sat down with Shannon Watts in June at the Commonwealth

Club in San Francisco.

I think like most people, most parents certainly, know where they were when they first heard about the

shooting at New Town. You know I know for us like at Mother Jones we rushed to do what

...