Using moms, money and moxie to stop gun violence

How do those of us who believe in the right to defend ourselves balance that with everyone’s right to not have our brains blown out?

Never mind open carry; here’s my open letter to Bill and Melinda Gates, Mike Bloomberg, David Rubenstein and all the other “pledgers” (you know, the world’s wealthiest people who vow to give away the majority of their wealth to philanthropy).

{mosads}Rubenstein recently spoke at the Atlantic/Aspen Idea Festival about patriotic philanthropy. Here’s my riff on that, and it’s patriotic and you don’t have to wait until you die to spend money and save lives. Take the National Rifle Association budget (all of it, the PAC money, the whatever-they-are-calling-this fund and that) and at a minimum, quadruple it with Giving Pledge dollars; lots and lots of dollars.

Idea No. 1: Use those billions and billions of dollars to create the Patriotic Life Fund (words matter) and mobilize the moms demanding gun sense to support elected officials at all levels and in all branches of government. Think EMILY’s List.

Those snappy slogans and pointed infographics, while compelling, just won’t cut it. If kids and people praying in a house of worship are killed in cold blood, it’s time to bring out the “big guns”: money and moms with moxie.

And what are they advocating for? We all know the litany of sensible suggestions, but what if we come at this differently. Think back to Al Capone.

Tax evasion and postal fraud: These can be mind-numbing and agonizingly arcane, but if big scary gangsters can get nailed this way, maybe we can come up with a hack for gun sense in the U.S.

Idea No. 2: In the healthcare space, where billions of dollars are the prize, just like guns, we are trying to figure out how to manage competing vested interests with warring stakeholder groups, lots of clever messaging, lots of passionate points of views, and strong opinions, as well as thorny technical challenges, and behavioral change conundrums. It is now de rigueur in the health and tech sectors to hold “challenges” and “hackathons” where smart people spend a day or two or more working on these issues. Rather than wait for Congress, why don’t we host these national idea storms — to come up with solutions that the Patriotic Life Fund could get behind and work with the moms (and others) to execute.

Solutions of the people, by the people, for the people. An approach, I submit, that those with a stated interest in the Constitution and the sanctity of life could get behind. Especially when the purses that moms will be wearing are bigger and deeper than the NRA’s.

Strongin is founder and creator of Disruptive Women in Health Care.