Shannon Watts

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Remember, They Have To Lie To Win

August 21, 2019 by

Stephen Gutowski of the Free Beacon alerted readers to this on Twitter. Shannon Watts, the head Demanding Mommie, intentionally misquoted Marion Hammer who was testifying on the proposed constitutional amendment in Florida that would effectively ban all semiautomatic firearms.

At a Tallahassee hearing on prohibiting assault weapons, @NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer said: “How do you tell a 10-year-old girl that the rifle she got for Christmas is an assault weapon and she has to give it up or risk arrest on felony charges?” #flapol https://t.co/aPVGTNYbx1— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) August 16, 2019

Marion Hammer is not my favorite person as anyone who has read this blog knows. However, I happen to believe that you really should quote what the person says accurately regardless of whether you agree with her or not.

In this case, what Marion really said is much more innocuous. Indeed, I think only the true believer gun prohibitionists would object to it.

From the Tampa Bay Times with the actual quote:

“How do you tell a 10-year-old little girl who got a Ruger 10/22 with a pink stock for her birthday that her rifle is an assault weapon and she has to turn it over to government or be arrested for felony possession?”

Shannon Watts knows how to play to an audience. If she has to lie as she plays the audience, so be it. Case in point -she was in Charlotte this past week for an event at Johnson C. Smith University billed as a “community conversation” on “gun violence” (sic). My friend Josette from Grass Roots North Carolina was in the audience and heard Watts say, ” there is NO background check to purchase an AR.” I’m sure some in the audience might believe that but it is an out and out lie. If called out on it by you or me, we’d be accused of bullying the “stay-at-home mom of five” which, by the way, is another of her inaccuracies.

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Poor Shannon – The Internet Never Forgets

April 9, 2019 by 1 Comment

We know Shannon Watts as the “stay at home” mom (of five) who founded Moms Demand Action as a response to the Newtown school murders. Public relations experts are very good at spinning myths and that first sentence contains a lot of myth befitting the PR expertise of Watts. Stay at home was always debatable and mom of five is true only if you include two step-children who probably lived with their real mom and not dad’s new younger wife.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal regarding RoundUp weedkiller, Monsanto, and successor company Bayer got me to thinking about Watts’ past corporate affiliations. The article detailed the role that Monsanto played in supposedly objective outside research that said their product RoundUp was safe. You had company scientists reviewing the drafts of outside research and suggesting changes. One wonders what role the public relations experts at Monsanto played in this.

The law firm leading many of the lawsuits against Bayer (which previously merged with Monsanto) is Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman PC. They have now started posting Monsanto emails found during discovery on their website. I haven’t started searching them yet but I do wonder what name I might discover when I do.

For those that are unaware, long before Shannon Watts was the founder of Moms Demand Action and long before her last name was Watts, she was Shannon Troughton and served as the Director of Global Public and Corporate Affairs for Monsanto from 2001 to 2004. That was a pretty fast advancement for someone who graduated Mizzou a mere seven years earlier. It means she was damn good at spin.

Interestingly, the first article I found linking then-Shannon Troughton with RoundUp was in my former hometown newspaper The Greensboro Daily News and Record. It had to do with a lawsuit filed by Syngenta which has a major facility in Greensboro against Monsanto. Both companies produced herbicides and there was a patent battle.

From the article:

Monsanto spokeswoman Shannon Troughton said the company is “surprised and disappointed with Syngenta’s lawsuit, since our business teams were in the midst of discussions on license terms for their new product.”


She said Monsanto is “confident in the validity” of the patents, which the company “will vigorously defend.”


Troughton added, “If Syngenta wants to face an injunction for product sales in the absence of a license, that’s their business decision.”

Another article quoting her talked about Brazil’s ban on GMO seeds like the Monsanto “Roundup Ready” seeds and her wish that Brazil would allow them in the country. While another article quoting her details Monsanto’s legal war against farmers saving seed.

The bottom line is that every time you hear Shannon Watts dancing in the blood of crime victims in her efforts to push gun control “for the children” remember her background. She’s an expert at pushing the narrative and the only narrative that really matters is the one that personally benefits her the most.

Now it is time to start searching those lawsuit emails for hidden gems.

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A Takeaway For Gun Owners From Pelosi’s Campaign For Speaker

November 21, 2018 by 2 Comments

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Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will probably be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. I say probably because there are some Democrats that are opposed to her and the aging leadership. She, Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and James Clyburn (D-SC) are all in their 70s. However, while this group of dissidents might prevent Pelosi from getting the requisite number of votes (218), it is doubtful they will win in the end.

In a story in the Washington Examiner about Pelosi’s campaign for Speaker and the battle her allies are waging on her behalf was this:

As the leadership fight escalates, Pelosi’s lined up endorsements from former President Barack Obama — who called Pelosi “one of the most effective legislative leaders” on Tuesday — and key advocacy groups that helped Democrats retake the majority. Progressive groups, gun control organizations, unions, reproductive rights groups like NARAL Pro-Choice and more have thrown their weight behind Pelosi’s speaker bid.


“Do you really want to make enemies out of these groups?” said (Rep. Jan) Schakowsky, adding later, that the fight “is not just inside baseball, this has enormous ramifications for how we successfully move forward to pass an agenda that’s going to help people.”

The Brady Campaign and Shannon Watts have all formally endorsed Pelosi for Speaker. Moreover, Michael Bloomberg who “invested” over $100 million in this election cycle to get Democrats elected has worked closely with Pelosi and shared office space with her super PAC.

What does this mean for gun owners?

It should be obvious – expect gun control to be on the Democrats agenda in the House from day one of the new Congress. Pelosi has a constituency to repay and she will. I fully expect that bills will be introduced that will contain every gun control measure that you can think of and some that we haven’t. Moreover, these bills will get a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee and most will pass in the House. Furthermore, the Hearing Protection Act, national reciprocity, and even provisions for use of Pittman-Robertson funds to construct shooting ranges are dead.

Our only hope for stopping these infringements will be the Senate which remains in Republican hands. Even then, there are some Republicans who might vote for things like red flag laws or bans on bump fire stocks. Fortunately, the filibuster is still alive when it comes to bills passing the Senate and it still will require 60 votes to invoke cloture. Therefore, if you haven’t contacted your two Senators or Senator-elect, you better do it now and put opposition to gun control on their radar.

The Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” will epitomize the next two years when it comes to the fight for gun rights.

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Well There Goes Her Rationale For Keeping Gun Free Zones

September 12, 2017 by

Shannon Watts, potential congressional candidate from Colorado and Bloomberg’s gift that keeps on giving, put up this tweet yesterday about the murders in Plano, Texas over the weekend. She is never one to let a family tragedy go to waste.

Watts and her minions have consistently argued against arming teachers and in favor of more gun free zones. Their argument is that a gun free zone is safer which people reading this blog know only creates a target rich environment for psychopaths.

Her whole supposed rationale for keeping schools, university campuses, and other public places “gun free” is to prevent mass shootings and “gun violence” (sic). Her Moms Demand Action was supposedly created in response to the murders in Newtown. (Actually, I think it was merely a vehicle to reinvent her moribund career.)

But if she is correct in stating that the majority of mass shootings take place in private residences, doesn’t that shoot down her rationale for more supposed gun free zones? Private residences will never be legally gun free. It will only be on an ad hoc basis at the whims of the individual residents. The Heller decision saw to that.

Shannon Watts is nothing if not consistently inconsistent. Her only consistencies seem to be guns are bad (unless they are used to protect me), “hey, look at me”, and how can I make a family tragedy into a PR gain for me.

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Bloomberg’s Gun Control “PR Whiz” Aligns Herself With Communists

August 18, 2017 by 2 Comments

Those arrested in Durham, North Carolina for pulling down a Confederate monument all belong to the World Workers Party. It is a Communist party off-shoot. They broke away from the Socialist Workers Party in 1959 over doctrinal differences. It seems they considered themselves more Trotskyist than the SWP. The WWP later absorbed the Spartacist League which was itself a leading Trotskyist-influenced Communist party.

The main thing to understand is that they are Communists regardless of whether they follow Stalin or Trotsky or whether they are 3rd Internationalists or 4th Internationalists. The other thing to know about the World Workers Party is that they are very much supporters of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea aka North Korea. Indeed, they strongly believe Kim Jong-Un and North Korea need “The Bomb”.

You can read their tirade about the “freedom fighters” pulling down the monument here.

Thus when I saw this tweet, I wondered if the PR whiz behind understands just who she is promoting and/or aligning herself with.

The Spartacist League was also known as the Spartacus League. It eventually became the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands or the German Communist Party of pre-WWII Germany.

The irony of it is delicious.

The ignorance of that tweet is even more delicious.

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I’m Amused

January 24, 2017 by 2 Comments

Jane Jetson haircut?

Not going to take fashion tips from some former Monsanto PR-hack?

I have no clue what the Demanding Mommy herself Shannon Watts had to say about Dana Loesch but it must have been catty. I know they go at each other on Twitter all the time.

Dana’s response on NRA TV to Grant Stinchfield amused me no end.

Jane Jetson haircut, bwahahahahaha! I wonder if Watts has a dog named Astro…

UPDATE: Thanks to Todd Vandermyde, I now know the backstory. You can read about it here. I’m still laughing about the Jane Jetson haircut.

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Just Like Clockwork

November 28, 2016 by 7 Comments

The saying that the only two sure things in this world are death and taxes needs a revision. The revision would be to add that in a (purported) campus active shooter situation where little or nothing is known, Shannon Watts of Mommies Demanding Illegal Mayors will be tweeting about it and asking for more gun control.

The first report of an active shooter at Ohio State came in just before 10am EST. The above tweet was made at just a bit after 11am EST. I’d like to be able to say it was her first tweet but it wasn’t. Shannon was tweeting within minutes of the first report.

Reports in the Columbus Dispatch about the incident are relatively sketchy. Some people are in the hospital reportedly with non-life threatening injuries. One of the attackers is reported dead. There is not identification of the attacker. There is no word on whether police killed the attacker or whether it was self-inflicted. There is no word on motive. There is no word on what type of weapon. The list goes on.

The bottom line is that Shannon Watts will use any attack or incident as a reason to push gun control regardless of the circumstances. Her blood dancing is really getting rather old.


UPDATE: More details of this “mass shooting” are coming out. The “shooter” actually hit a number of pedestrians with his car and then started stabbing them with a butcher knife. There were no firearms involved other than that of the OSU police officer who shot and killed the attacker approximately a minute after the attack began. The unnamed attacker is reported in another story to be a Somali refugee with permanent legal residence who was a student. Unlike earlier reports, there appears to have only been this one attacker. The motive for the attack is unknown at this time.

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This Ad Was Obviously A Failure

September 16, 2016 by 1 Comment

I came across this video from Bloomberg’s Everytown this morning. I thought in light of the Missouri General Assembly overriding Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of constitutional carry, it would be fun to show this waste of advertising dollars. It is obvious to me that the legislators listened to their own constituents rather than to Bloomberg.

Given that Shannon Watts (then Shannon Troughton) got her start after graduating Mizzou working for as a PR flack for Gov. Mel Carnahan (D-MO), you might be forgiven for thinking she would have a better feel for politics in her former state of residence.

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France Is Not A Developed Country

June 12, 2016 by 4 Comments

Now I know most of you are wondering about the headline. How can France not be a developed country. It has the Louvre, wonderful vineyards, exquisite cuisine, couture fashion, and was the home of thousands of brilliant scientists, artists, writers, and musicians over the centuries.

Well, according to Shannon Watts of Everytown Mayors for Demanding Mommies, it just can’t be because shootings like the one by the Islamofascist at a gay night club in Orlando only happen in America and no other developed country.

The attack by Muslim terrorists at Le Bataclan in Paris which killed 130 and wounded hundreds more is off of Shannon’s radar because it doesn’t fit her gun control narrative. France, by the way, had very, very strict gun control laws as does Belgium where many of those terrorists obtained their weapons.

Terrorists are going to kill people. It is what they do. That it was a gay nightclub fits squarely within the ISIS/ISIL playbook as they despise both Americans and gays. The thought that universal background checks or adding those on the No-Fly list to the NICS database would stop a dedicated American-born Muslim terrorist from obtaining a firearm with which to kill people is ludicrous.

Moreover, that presumes that firearms are the only weapons at the disposal of a dedicated Islamofascist terrorist. A quick trip to the local Exxon or BP station would provide the makings of a very effective terror weapon.

The only thing that I do agree with in her tweet is that we should pray for the victims.

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You Can’t Make This Sh@% Up

November 14, 2015 by 9 Comments

It seems that the Demanding Moms for Illegal Mayors got a little ahead of themselves here and had to delete the tweet below.

Mass shooting? Nice dumbing down of a terrorist attack there, Shannon.

I guess if France had universal background checks then these ISIS terrorists couldn’t have obtained their full-auto AK-47s. Oh, wait, you have to have a firearms license which includes a psychological examination, criminal background check, and a defined purpose for having a firearm before you can even possess a firearm.

Those full-auto AKs? Illegal for civilians to possess. I guess terrorists don’t play by the rules. Funny how that works.