have you guys heard the news about cohost's financial state. the more i read about everything regarding it the more ridiculous it gets

Networked By Subscription—Why A New U.K. Platform Aims To Support Angel Investment

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Networked By Subscription—Why A New U.K. Platform Aims To Support Angel Investment

Roei Samuel, co-founder of Connectd

Being well networked can make life – or perhaps more accurately, progress through life – a whole lot easier. Take the process of starting, running, and growing a business. If you grow up in an entrepreneurial family not only will you have brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles and parents who can provide advice, contacts, and very often financial support, you’re also likely to have a much wider community of investors, business owners and advisers. Thus, the world of the entrepreneur is one that is relatively easy to access. Those who don’t come from that kind of background can always build their networks, but it takes time, effort and a willingness to step into the unknown. In other words, it’s tougher.   

And apparently, it’s not just founders who suffer from the “network” problem – it can also affect investors. When Roei Samuel sold his esports company, RealSports to GFinity at the age of 23, he began to look around for angel investing opportunities. But as he discovered, it wasn’t that easy to source deals. “I quickly found there were some issues with investing,” he recalls. “The same deals were going to the same investors.” 

In other words, connected investors were able to identify opportunities that weren’t visible to prospective angels who fell outside the best networks. Meanwhile, many founders were struggling to get on the radar screens of angels.  A familiar story.

Samuel’s solution was to create a three-sided marketplace that would match not only angels and founders but also a community of NEDs, mentors and business advisors. Co-founded by Samuel, Nathan Weekes and Sam Luckett the platform – dubbed Connectd – launched at the beginning of 2020 and has just come out of beta.   

Our Old Friend The Algorithm 

So how does it work?  

Well, not surprisingly, it utilizes our old friend the matching algorithm. As Samuel explains, angels sign up and set out the type of companies and sectors they are interested in. Once that’s done, they are matched to founders who have themselves provided details of their business plans. Prospective NEDs and business advisers go through a similar process. After matching, the parties can communicate through on-site messaging. Thus, a founder can hook up with a funder, NED or adviser and vice versa. 

Increased Visibility

Samuel says the appeal to investors lies in the visibility of deals. “If you are a first-time angel you can go onto the platform and get good access to deals. And you’ll be able to access a diverse group of businesses,” he says.  

That diversity is a key part of the Connectd proposition. Angels who join syndicates will often have a limited number of deals presented to them. And in Samuel’s experience, the prospects are often chosen because of eligibility for tax breaks under the United Kingdom’s Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS).  He says his platform frees investors to choose from a bigger pool of companies.   

On the other side of the coin, he says founders can meet prospective investments without having to pay finder’s fees to brokers. “A founder may not have a personal network and brokers can charge £10,000 or £15,000 for introductions.” In addition, it provides a mechanism for meeting investors that may appeal to certain business owners. “There are founders who are great with technology,” he says. “But they don’t like pitching at demo days or pitching events where the atmosphere can be a bit Dragons Den (Shark Tank).” Meanwhile, advisors – perhaps at an early stage – can pitch their services without having to go through headhunting agencies. agencies.   

As things stand, the fees are a modest £20 a month, allowing low-cost access to talent and capital. But will it find a bigger niche in a corporate finance marketplace that has proved itself to be innovative over the last ten years? For instance, equity crowdfunding platforms also match companies not only with “armchair investors” but also professional angels and VCs.  

“Crowdfunding is different,” he says. “It tends to be about marketing as much as anything. We are about matching founders with strategic investors.”  

That’s probably open to argument. Crowdfunding certainly can be a marketing exercise aimed at bringing in a diverse group of small shareholders who also act as ambassadors, but often angels and VCs also invest in tandem through the platforms.  

Nevertheless, Connectd does provide an alternative and perhaps will help to create a more diverse investment, fundraising, and business support ecosystem. There is certainly a need to attract more people to angel investing and a platform like this may help aspirants to connect with a broad range of founders.

Samuel says one manifestation of this is a flow of funds to female and ethnic minority-led teams. He cites  Electricmiles – an all ethnic minority founded business – that made its first raise through the platform and female-led mybespokeroom.com.  

It is early days, though. Connected currently has “hundreds” of subscribers, suggesting there is a way to go in terms of growing the platform. Revenues, however,  have been growing by 21% month on month since launch and there are plans to scale up not only in the U.K. but in overseas markets.

From Entrepreneurs in Perfectirishgifts

‘While I breathe, I hope’: In conversation with Ali Gharavi of the #Istanbul10

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‘While I breathe, I hope’: In conversation with Ali Gharavi of the #Istanbul10

‘The humanity of what I experienced in detention was humbling.’

A picture of #Istanbul10. Photo credit: Amnesty International via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 4.0].

Editor's note: This interview is republished through a partnership between Global Voices and IFEX. Read the full interview here. Ali Gharavi is a strategy and holistic security consultant working with human rights defenders, their organisations and communities. He is one of ten people — including İdil Eser, former director of Amnesty Turkey — who were arrested in Turkey in July 2017 at an information management and well-being workshop on Buyukada island. The hashtag #Istanbul10 was used in the sustained advocacy efforts that called for the dropping of all charges against them and their immediate release. In March 2020, ahead of an anticipated – but since postponed – verdict hearing, Ali spoke with IFEX Regional Editor Cathal Sheerin about how his experience being arrested in Turkey and jailed for four months has affected his life and informed his work. CS: How do you feel about the upcoming hearing?

I feel a combination of anticipation and anxiety. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions over the last almost three years and the verdict was supposed to have been reached at the last hearing. In terms of realistic outcomes, we’ve talked about two or three possibilities with our families, lawyers and the authorities in Sweden. I’ve been trying to keep my wits about me and not putting all my eggs in one basket, but we’re pretty optimistic that the outcome could be acquittal.

What makes you optimistic for acquittal?

I’m only nominally optimistic really because these things can turn on a dime. At the hearing before the last one, the prosecutor said that – of the ten of us plus Taner Kılıç – he would accept acquittal for five because of lack of evidence, but the rest he wanted to convict. I was in the acquittal group. All of us are quite adamant, however, about not having this ‘split’ decision.

Why do you think you were divided into two groups?

It’s really hard to say. Two of us in the acquittal group – Peter Steudtner and I – are not Turkish, so it’s possible that they want to remove the international angle from all of this. However, that’s just my speculation. It’s actually quite arbitrary, and I think this is partly because they have no evidence. It might even be a way to ramp this down: Let’s acquit half of them now and then acquit the rest in a trickle.

What has been the impact of your arrest, detention and trial on your family and friends?

This is a really important question for me, because we always tend to concentrate on the person who’s at the centre of the crisis. However, I compare the experience to a cluster bomb, where the first detonation is our arrest and the subsequent explosions take place in our families, among our friends and at our work as people discover what has happened. It’s not just confined to the ten or 11 who are in prison – it spreads like a virus, infecting everyone it comes into contact with. My partner went through great trauma, as did other members of my family, because of this. It can be all-encompassing for some people, as it was for me. It changes one’s life. You become a different person because of the trauma you endured: four months of being in various Turkish prisons leaves its footprint; and then, for your partner, there’s not knowing where her loved one is for two months, whether he is alive or not. My wife, Laressa Dickey, Peter’s partner, Magdalena Freudenschuss, and our colleague, Dan O’Cluanaigh, ended up creating a de facto response organisation that helped coordinate and inform the activities of all the other advocacy groups, such as IFEX. We called it the ‘Family Unit’ and its activities were informed by the work that Peter, Dan and I do – holistic security – which is about being actively aware that a crisis has many different aspects, including the digital footprint, physical security, health and psychological well-being. The ‘Family Unit’ did strategic planning and set objectives, such as caring for the families of the incarcerated and providing systematic communications so that each family had all the relevant information about their loved ones. They also developed protocols with our lawyers; some of this was as mundane as giving the lawyers our shoe and underwear sizes so that they could buy things for us. It’s basic, but that’s the stuff that makes it easier for the lawyers to do their actual work. The lawyers became the only mode of contact with us; my own lawyer is now my dearest friend because he was my lawyer and also my personal shopper, confidante, adviser and therapist.

Ali Gharavi. Photo credit: Annie Game

How aware were you when you were detained of the advocacy that was taking place on your behalf? What impact did it have on your morale?

Maintaining my morale was one of the biggest challenges for me. I was held at four different sites. At one point, they transferred us to the anti-terrorism headquarters for interrogation, which sounds like – and was – quite a harrowing experience. Then my family heard that, because of overcrowding, they’d placed me in a two-person cell with four others, two of whom were ISIS members. Obviously, when you hear that, it sounds like the most horrendous situation, but in reality it was actually a very supportive environment. Those two supposed ISIS members were actually just two religious boys who’d grown beards. I walked in to this very compact area where they’d all heard that these ‘super-spies’ were coming, and this young nineteen-year-old supposed ISIS member started speaking to me in German, knowing that I’d lived in Germany. He said: “You’re our elder, you’re our uncle, this is your home, whatever you want we’ll provide.” The moments which – from the outside – looked quite devastating, were sometimes actually moments of amazing solidarity. Most of our incarceration was spent in a maximum security prison. Because they supposedly thought we were super-advanced spies they put us in the Number Nine Prison, which has extra security. I had only one hour a week to see people – usually my lawyer or sometimes a diplomat. You begin to forget what the outside looks like and you assume that the outside doesn’t remember you either. But every week my wife would email details to my lawyer of everything that was being done for us, so that my lawyer could print it all out and pretend that it was a legal document (because that was the only thing I was permitted to look at). I’ve done letter-writing campaigns in the past, and I never knew for sure if they had any effect on the people who were in jail, but having been on the inside, I can say that those moments were life-saving. Sometimes my lawyer would search for my name on Twitter and print out all the tweets that had been posted that week about me; there was also this Twitter campaign, #haikusforAli, and demonstrations in Brussels, sit-ins in front of embassies. All of those moments reminded me that people on the outside were thinking of me and mobilising. I’m not exaggerating when I say that those were the things that saved me when I was in the depths of an abyss.

How has the experience affected how you work?

The kind of work I’d been doing was intended exactly for this kind of situation, where you need to pay attention to the whole person, not just their devices or the organisation’s activities. Because of my incarceration, I now understand that at a molecular level. For me, the whole experience has placed a higher premium on understanding people – who they are, where they are – as a big part of how we can actually help them regardless of whichever aspect of their work we’re trying to assist them with. One thing the experience revealed was how inadequately resourced and researched care and crisis response is: how do you care for not just the person incarcerated, but also his family, the community around him, his colleagues? Once the crisis is ‘over’ the assumption is that life goes on as usual, whereas there’s actually recovery that needs to be done. Often there’s also a massive financial burden due to legal costs and the inability to work for a while. After my release I went to Berlin and arrived into a very supportive debriefing environment. It’s a very privileged situation to be in – those ten days were very helpful in making me understand that I’d be going through this trauma and recovery and that it’s not just business as usual. There was a crowd-funder created for me so that I didn’t just have to drop back into work, and there was physical and psychological therapy too. I knew it intellectually, but now I know it viscerally, that just because you get released the trauma doesn’t just go away. It takes years to be functional again. People assume that when you recover you’re going to go back to being who you were, but that’s not true.

Would you ever return to Turkey?

It would be very difficult for me to feel safe there, but I would go, if only in order to ‘get back on the horse’. If the verdict doesn’t go the way we expect, then I’d be incarcerated if I turned up there, so I obviously wouldn’t return. I love Turkey – the people and the environment – and I feel like a big part of my life and friends is now off-limits to me. But I dream of when I’ll be able to go back, hug the people who were inside with me and eat baklava with them. As Cicero said: ‘While I breathe, I hope.’ The humanity of what I experienced in detention was humbling. Regardless of why those people were incarcerated with me, they – that young 19-year-old who spoke to me in German, and others – were an amazing source of inspiration and support. During the toughest times I’d be angry with them, but they were amazingly unwavering. I’ve heard via word of mouth that those two supposed ISIS members are now back with their families and all is well. I owe them a big debt of gratitude. Most of the time I was incarcerated alongside political prisoners who faced trial on specious charges, or who had been (and continue to be) detained for years on end as they wait for an indictment. And now we hear that despite the mortal threat of COVID-19 sweeping through the prison system, those prisoners will stay behind bars.

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[David B. Kopel] The Million Mom March: Mass Mobilization Against Guns

On Mother's Day 2000, record-setting demonstrations for gun control were held in Washington, D.C., and in 73 other cities. Organized by the "Million Mom March," these demonstrations were hailed by much of the media at the decisive turning point in the political battle over gun ownership. This article takes a look at the history of the march, and some of the similarities and differences from 2018 anti-gun rallies. The founder After growing up in Louisiana and graduating from Louisiana State University with a major in journalism, Donna Dees-Thomases began her career as a local television news reporter. Then she moved to Washington, as a staffer first for Democratic Senator Bennett Johnston, then with Senator Russell Long, both of Louisiana. Her autobiography makes no mention of her having any opinion on the gun control issues that those Senators addressed during her time with them. (Her autobiography is Donna Dees-Thomases & Alison Hendrie, Looking for a Few Good Moms: How One Mother Rallied a Million Others Against the Gun Lobby (Emmaus, Penn.: Rodale, 2004).) After that, she became the publicist for CBS News anchor Dan Rather. By 1999, she had transitioned to a one-day-per-week job as a publicist for David Letterman, living in suburban New Jersey, and devoting most of her attention to her two young children, as well as older children from a previous marriage of her husband. On August 7, 1999, a racist, mentally ill man loaded seven guns into his car in order to attack Jews in Los Angeles. He went to the Skirball Cultural Center, then to American Jewish University and finally to the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance. As he scouted each location, he realized that all of them had armed security, so he did not attack. On August 10, he found an undefended target: North Valley Jewish Community Center. He opened fire on the playground, fired 70 shots, wounding one adult and three children. After fleeing, he murdered a mailman. Eventually, he was apprehended in Las Vegas. To avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to life in prison. Back in New Jersey, Mrs. Dees-Thomases watched the coverage of the attack with horror. Her husband and in-laws were Jewish, and her children attended a Jewish Community Center nursery school. She started reading about gun control and tried to reach out the leading anti-gun lobby of the time (Handgun Control, Inc., now known as the Brady Campaign), but without much response. So she decided to take the reins herself, and applied for a permit to hold a demonstration in Washington, D.C., on May 14, 2000--Mother's Day. She noticed an article in the New York Post about the controversy of a permit for a "Million Youth March," in New York City. The 1999 march was a follow-up to a 1998 event of the same name, organized by Khalid Abdul Muhammad. A notorious racist, anti-Semite, and hater of homosexuals, he had been expelled from the Nation of Islam and censured by both houses of the U.S. Congress. The 1998 rally had turned into a melee between the 6,000 demonstrators and the police, with Muhammad exhorting the crowd to take the officers' gun and kill them. Mayor Giuliani said that the Million Youth March was "filled with hatred, horrible, awful, vicious, anti-Semitic and other anti-white rhetoric, as well as exhortations to kill people, murder people." As Dees-Thomases read about the planned 1999 Million Youth March, "I realized that this 'Million March' brand had built-in news value. So I decided to borrow the name." (p. 11). This was a controversial borrowing. It reminded many people of the "Million Man March" that Louis Farrakhan had organized on the National Mall in D.C. in 1995. Indeed, the name for Muhammad's "Million Youth March" seemed to be derived from Farrakhan's "Million Man March." Dees-Thomases was surprised that people thought her similarly-named march might "echo or condone the alleged anti-Semitic stance of Louis Farrakhan, the founder of the Million Man March." She felt that "adopting this name was akin to 'turning the other cheek.'" (p. 66). It is not clear why Dees-Thomases called Farrakhan's amti-Semitism "alleged." Beginning to organize Mrs. Dees-Thomases called her sister-in-law, Susan Thomases for advice. Mrs. Thomases was a longtime friend and political advisor of Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Thomases told her sister-in-law to hire a good lawyer and a good accountant, and recommended an individual for the job of event planner. According to Mrs. Dees-Thomases that was the only help she ever solicited or received from Mrs. Thomases (p. 13). Mrs. Dees-Thomases used her publicity skills and network of media contacts to garner media attention, and that helped lead to the formation of some local chapters of the Million Mom March. But she was still paying most of the expenses herself, feeling overwhelmed--and also undersupported by the established gun control groups. Part of the problem was that the older groups were not interested in letting a newcomer horn in on two new lucrative sources of funding: First, there was the Bell Campaign, a new gun control group in San Francisco. It had four million dollars from the Richard and Rhonda Goldman Foundation. Second, there was a ten million dollar fund that has been established by George Soros and Irene Diamond to promote gun control. At an October event in Tulsa, Mrs. Dees-Thomases met Mary Leigh Blek, president of the Bell Campaign. A little while later, she managed to meet with Rebecca Peters, who was in charge of the Soros-Diamond money. An Australian, Peters had helped lead the successful campaign for gun confiscation in Australia. The confiscation program had been long-planned and was rolled out immediately after a mass shooting in which 35 people were murdered. New laws prohibited gun ownership for self-defense, and confiscated about 20-25% of Australian firearms--including semiautomatic and pump action long guns, plus handguns over .38 caliber. The confiscation was facilitated by comprehensive gun registration laws, which had existed in some Australian states for decades, and in others for only a few years. Later, in 2002, Peters would become head of an international gun prohibition lobby, the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). It advocated for outlawing defensive gun ownership, banning all handguns, and banning any rifle that can shoot 100 meters (that is, almost all of them). Peters was impressed with what Dees-Thomases had done so far. Eight weeks after Dees-Thomases had invented the MMM, it received a Bell $100,000 starting grant (which later grew to $300,000), plus access to the Peters/Soros/et al. fundraising network. Even so, the MMM was still on shaky ground. The Violence Policy Center refused any cooperation, labeling MMM and other groups "enablers" because they refused to publicly endorse VPC's demand to ban all handguns. Worse, the biggest of the gun control groups, Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), was worried that the MMM wouldn't attract a big enough crowd in D.C., and the media would portray the event as a failure for gun control advocates. Dees-Thomases disagreed: "The Million Mom March was something that the media would love. In fact, they were already loving it." (p. 82). She was absolutely right, but the rest of the gun control movement remained skeptical. Peters warned that Bell might have to pull its funding. In despair in December 1999, Dees-Thomases asked God for a sign that she should keep at it. The next day, the National PTA announced that it was endorsing the MMM. That was the sign she needed, and it was also the sign that her funders needed. Peters became "our MMM fairy godmother." Peters made it clear to the older gun control groups that "if each group shared their resources with the Million Mom March, there would be a nice Soros-Diamond treat for everybody at the end of the day, in the form of a grant." (p. 114). Andrew McKelvey, the CEO of Monster.com and a board member of HCI, would eventually pay for about a third of the cost of the D.C. march (pp. 145-46). Bell took over organizing all the marches outside of D.C., leaving Dees-Thomases free to concentrate on the main event at the National Mall (p. 136). The difference between 1999 and 2018 could not be starker. It took Mrs. Dees-Thomases five months of work--from August to December--before she finally got full buy-in from the gun control groups, their allies (starting with National PTA), and their wealthy funders. In contrast, it took only a few hours for the anti-gun students from Parkland, Florida, to be funded, publicized, and absorbed into the vast network of Michael Bloomberg's public relations staff, Hollywood celebrities, and other leading organizations, such as the American Federation of Teachers. It's a lot easier to be the face of a grassroots movement when large groups with paid staff all over the country will do the organizing for you. The agenda Dees-Thomases's original manifesto for the MMM had claimed that the group respected Second Amendment rights. That was excised by Bell, which believed that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right. While some MMM members wanted to call for banning all guns, Dees-Thomases refused to go so far, partly because she knew her supporters in the South would bolt. Instead, the MMM stated: "While we acknowledge that guns may be necessary for hunting, law enforcement and national security, the proliferation of firearms is out of control." Notably, the group refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of defensive gun ownership. Such refusal was the common position of gun control groups at the time. Since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008 Heller decision, the same groups now purport to support the Second Amendment individual right, including self-defense. Thanks to Peters' arm-twisting (backed by her control over grants that everyone wanted), almost all the gun control groups, including MMM, coalesced around a common platform of licensing and registration. (p. 115). Bill Clinton had endorsed that agenda in his 2000 State of the Union, and Vice-President Al Gore was making it part of his presidential campaign. Media coverage Mrs. Dees-Thomases had already been skilled at publicity, but the now-united coalitions of allies made the MMM a publicity powerhouse. Media coverage was rarely critical, and often fawning. Frequently she was portrayed as an ordinary housewife from New Jersey, as the media omitted her impressive resume of work on Capitol Hill and as a publicist near at the top of the media food chain. As the crescendo of favorable media coverage built in April and early May, more doors began to open. U.S. Airways gave free tickets to people who wanted to fly to D.C. for the march. The MMM finally got onto the Rosie O'Donnell Show. Thomases wondered if that might have happened sooner, but for Dan Rather's repeated refusal of invitations (when Thomases was his publicist) to go on the O'Donnell program. Then came the biggest prize of all: Oprah on May 2. Oprah's interview with her was very friendly. The only downside was having the share the hour with Attorney General Janet Reno, who wanted to talk about the Elian Gonzalez case (p. 156). Reno had recently organized the gunpoint abduction of a six-year-old Cuban refugee. After breaking into the Florida home where Gonzalez was staying, federal employees had found Gonzalez in a closet, held and protected by a young man who had rescued the boy from the sea, after the boy's mother drowned when their boat sank. "Give me the fucking kid!" one of Reno's employees screamed, as he pointed an automatic rifle at the two. An Associated Press photographer, who was also hiding in the house, won the Pulitzer Prize for his photo of the abduction. Mrs. Dees-Thomases' book does not say whether or not it felt odd to be denouncing gun violence against children, while appearing on the same program as General Reno. In any case, the MMM was on a roll. President Clinton wanted to address the MMM D.C. rally in person. Dees-Thomases had to reluctantly refuse his offer, because the necessary security screening for everyone on the Mall would have been a logistical nightmare. Other politicians, including Mrs. Clinton (then running for U.S. Senate from New York) and Vice-President Gore were also turned down, as Dees-Thomases wisely decided to keep the focus on mothers rather than politicians. There were no hard feelings. Mrs. Clinton delivered a recorded address to the march. President Clinton hosted a pre-march White House event for the MMM group from Michigan (p.166). Moral superiority The central theme of the MMM was often articulated by Bell Campaign President Mary Leigh Blek: "We love our children more than you love your damn guns." (p. 175). When she delivered the line at the march itself, it seemed to be directed at a nearby group of counter-protesters (p. 189). The "Second Amendment Sisters" was a pro-gun group of mothers and other women who had organized to provide an alternative perspective on the gun debate. If you spend any time talking with "anti-gun" or "pro-gun" women, it is readily apparent that both types of women love children, even though they have very different ideas about best to protect them. Yet to the MMM, the Second Amendment Sisters, and anybody who agreed with them, were "gun nuts" who only loved guns, not children. How could the MMM believe that people who disagree with it on gun policy don't love children? One reason is willful ignorance. Responsible adults who participate in public affairs take the time to learn the arguments of the other side. When they understand the other side's best arguments, they are better able to make a thoughtful case for their own position. Sometimes they may revise their position based on new information. Childish adults wall themselves off from contrary views. They imagine that the worst people on the other side (such as the jerks who sent Dees-Thomases torrents of hate mail) represent everyone on the other side. Some people are too intellectually timid to read or listen to advocates of contrary views. Instead, they learn about other views only through sources that are sure to twist those views to make them appear foolish. Today, there are many people whose main exposure to non-leftist ideas is through the distorted lens of comedians such as John Oliver. Even in her 2004 book, Mrs. Dees-Thomases remained oblivious to the pro/con evidence on debate on various gun control measures. She apparently still thought that automatic guns (a/k/a "machine guns") can be bought at retail under the same rules as ordinary guns. Actually, ever since the National Firearms Act of 1934, such guns require a months-long registration and tax process with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Automatics manufactured after 1986 may only be sold the government. As for gun registration, according to Mrs. Dees-Thomases, "if registration becomes law, all guns will be registered before they leave the manufacturers, and they would be more easily traceable as a result." (p. 75). Supposedly, manufacturers object because of the "added cost plus diminished demand by criminals." (p.173). In fact, manufacturer-based registration has been federal law since the Gun Control Act of 1968. When a manufacturer ships a firearm to a wholesaler or retailer, the manufacturer must create a permanent record of the transaction, including the gun's make, model, and serial number. The wholesaler or retail must create a similar permanent record upon receipt of the gun. The ATF can examine these records during compliance inspections and can use the records to trace guns. Today, most the large manufacturers and wholesalers participate in the ATF eTrace program that allows ATF electronic access to the records, so that ATF can conduct in a few seconds a trace of any gun the manufacturer made. It's easier to hate gun manufacturers if you don't know the laws they already obey, and you don't know how they already go far beyond their legal obligations, by allowing ATF remote access to their electronic records, even though the law only requires on-site access to paper records. Mrs. Dees-Thomases' book is riddled with many similar errors, all of which accumulate in only one direction. These days, thanks in part to Twitter and Facebook, it's even easier for anti-gun groups to spread disinformation--such as the lie that federal law prohibits gun research, even though the National Institutes for Health have funded over 11 million dollars of gun research in the last several years. Learning about public affairs can be tough work, since if usually requires reading, including reading the best analysis and research from experts with whom one disagrees. For some people, it's more gratifying just to hear one's favorite talking points repeated by people who just repeat talking points--such as a high school student who thinks he is a political expert because he watched House of Cards. After all, that program had episodes demonstrating that Republicans secretly favor gun control, but pretend to oppose it only for cynical politics. The Mother's Day March The master of ceremonies for the big rally on the National Mall was television host Rosie O'Donnell (p. 187). At the time, she was second only to President and Mrs. Clinton as America's leading anti-gun advocate. Shortly after the Columbine murders, O'Donnell had announced that all guns should be banned, and that anyone who possessed a gun should serve a mandatory sentence. At a White House event leading up to the March, O'Donnell had met with Suzanna Hupp. Mrs. Hupp, a young mother, had helped lead the successful fight for Texas to enact a concealed handgun permit law in 1995. In 1991, at a Luby's Cafeteria in Texas, Mrs. Hupp had seen her parents and two dozen other people murdered before her eyes by a mass killer. Rosie, "The Queen of Nice," listened to Mrs. Hupp's story, and then announced that Texas was right to have prevented law-abiding citizens from defending themselves or their families; things in the Luby's Cafeteria would have gotten too dangerous if someone had shot at the murderer. Somewhat inconsistently, in 2001 Ms. O'Donnell had her bodyguard request permission to carry a handgun when he accompanied O'Donnell's children to their "gun-free" school. Another MMM speaker was actress Susan Sarandon. Shortly beforehand, she had spent the weekend at a Madison Square Garden rally for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a man who used a revolver to murder a policeman. Also speaking on the Washington Mall was Barbara Graham. A few weeks, she shot 22-year-old Kikko Smith in the spine and left him paralyzed. She believed, wrongly, that her victim had been involved the murder of her son. Subsequent to the arrest, a search of Graham's home found four handguns were found, including a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol. (A low-quality gun with a 30-round magazine.) That didn't disqualify her from the MMM. In court the next year, "the women from Million Moms are backing her at her trial," reported the Washington Post. ("Woman Goes on Trial In Ambush Shooting; Bid to Avenge Slain Son Is Alleged," Washington Post, Jan. 24, 2001). The jury, however, convicted her of aggravated assault with intent to kill. One of the fieriest speeches at the MMM rally came from Rabbi Eric Yoffe, President of the Union American Hebrew Congregations. He declared that the National Rifle Association "is the real criminals' lobby in this country," and "is drenched in the blood of murdered children." Said O'Donnell, "We have had enough." Likewise, Mrs. Clinton's videotaped message stated, "it is time to say, enough!" Musical performances from Melissa Manchester, Melissa Etheridge, Emmylou Harris (singing a song composed by Roseanne Cash) entertained the crowd. Celebrities including Tyne Daly, Anna Quindlen, Courtney Love, and Bette Midler made appearances. Schoolchildren sang "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, keep your guns away from me." (pp. 196-97). Probably the favorite song of the event was "Throw These Guns Away," which had become the "anthem" of the MMM (pp. 106, 144, 186). While the rally in D.C. was going on, 73 parallel rallies were held all over the United States. According to Dees-Thomases, they collectively attracted just under a quarter million people (p. 198). As for the D.C. rally itself, the MMM claimed 750,000, although even Bill Clinton didn't agree with that Trumpian figure. The crowd was probably about a hundred thousand, which is still impressively large, and double the number that Dees-Thomases had been told would the minimum for a successful rally. At the end of the rally, Dees-Thomases handed over leadership of the MMM to Mary Blek, who thereafter ran the MMM from San Francisco offices. Within a few days, the Bell Campaign changed its name from "Bell Campaign" to "Million Mom March" (p. 202). Election According to the MMM, and to much of the media, the MMM was the grassroots movement that would permanently alter the gun debate in the United States. White suburban women have long been the holy grail of the gun prohibition movement. Firearms homicides in the United States are heavily concentrated in low-income urban areas. The high homicide rate there generates little political pressure for any remedy, whether than be gun control or early intervention social welfare programs. (My argument for the latter is detailed in my book Guns: Who Should Have Them?) So the gun prohibition lobbies concentrate on terrifying suburban women about dangers to their suburban children. That is why when 19-year-old gangsters shoot each other, the gun control lobbies classify that as "children" who "killed by guns." And it is why firearms homicides at schools, which have declined by about 75% in the last-quarter century, remain the primary subject of discussion by the gun control lobbies. (In 1992-93, 0.55 per million students; in 2014-15, 0.15 per million students, according to Northeastern Univ. Prof. James Alan Fox.) Having successfully organized rallies, the MMM transitioned to more direct politics. In the 2000 Maryland Governor's race, the MMM and the Brady Campaign ran radio ads against Republican candidate Bob Ehrlich: "Tell him we don't want Uzis, AK-47s and cheap handguns in our neighborhoods." (Ehrlich won.) In the October 11, 2000, presidential debate, Al Gore emphasized his support for national licensing of gun owners. He also blamed "a flood of cheap handguns." George W. Bush supported some gun control, but focused on character and culture. Gun control was not as popular in election season as some of the press had thought it was back in May. "Democrats on Defensive over Guns," said the Seattle Times (Oct. 22, 2000). "For Democrats, Gun Issue Is Losing Its Fire," reported the Washington Post (Oct. 20, 2000). Gore's running mate, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, tried to convince crowds that "Al Gore and I respect the Second Amendment right to bear arms." (Duluth News Trib. (Minn.), Nov. 3, 2000.) This was not a credible claim. The Clinton-Gore administration had consistently taken the position that there are no individual Second Amendment rights. Solicitor General Seth Waxman had written that "the Second Amendment does not extend an individual right to keep and bear arms." He explained that the government "could 'take guns away from the public,' and 'restrict ownership of rifles, pistols and shotguns from all people.'" (Letter from Seth Waxman, Aug. 22, 2000.) The NRA put Waxman's "take guns" quote on billboards in swing states. Let's hypothesize that somewhere between 350,000 and 1,000,000 people attended a MMM rally, that every one of them voted in November, and they all voted for Gore, the candidate who endorsed the MMM agenda. Sincere as the rally-goers were, they represented themselves only, and not the entire demographic of mothers, or any other group. George W. Bush won Florida by a few hundred votes, and thus the election by a single electoral vote. If not for the gun issue, the election would not have been close. The gun issue cost Gore Missouri, West Virginia (voting Republican in a close election for the first time in a century), Gore's home state of Tennessee, Clinton's home state of Arkansas, and Florida. Shortly after the election, Bill Clinton blamed Gore's defeat on the gun issue and the NRA. He later repeated that analysis in his autobiography. (Bill Clinton, My Life 928 (2004)). Aftermath In the summer of 2001, the United Nations held a major conference on gun control. Representing the MMM, Mary Blek received a standing ovation from the delegates. She said that the grouped represented a "billion" mothers worldwide. Bu all was not well back in the U.S. The May 2001 MMM rallies drew much smaller crowds. The group laid off 30 of its 35 paid staff. It was evicted from its offices in the San Francisco General Hospital. The MMM had obtained office space from the Trauma Foundation, without SF General's knowledge, and was using the space for lobbying, in violation of the city-owned hospital's rules. In October 2001, the remnant of the MMM was moved to D.C. and absorbed by its one-time rival, Handgun Control, Inc. Not long before, Handgun Control, Inc., had discovered that many Americans considered "control" to be off-putting. So the group had renamed itself the "Brady Campaign." Its new subdivision was the "Million Mom March United with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence." The new arrangement freed Mrs. Dees-Thomases to say what she really thinks. In a 2002 MMM op-ed, she called for "common-sense measures": a ban on all pump action guns, gun prohibition for everyone under 21, and psychological testing for all gun owners under 25. (Donna Dees-Thomases & Carolynne Jarvis, "Why wait to tackle gun violence?" Detroit Free Press, Aug. 8, 2002). The MMUBCPGV still exists, at least in a nominal sense. But by 2013, it was clear that a new "mom" group was needed. So today, "Moms Demand Action" is part of Michael Bloomberg's "Everytown" gun control organization. It is headed by Shannon Watts, formerly Director of Global Public and Corporate Affairs for Monsanto, and before that a press relations officer for anti-gun Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan. She too is portrayed in the media an ordinary mom making her first foray into politics. The days of September 1999, when Mrs. Dees-Thomases was funding the MMM with her Visa card, are long gone. So too are the days when anti-gun activists were fighting over their share of a four million dollar grant fund. Singlehandedly, Michael Bloomberg and allied billionaires now far outspend the NRA. Bloomberg personally has more money than the combined market capitalization of every U.S. firearm manufacturer. Rhetorically, the antigun rallies of 2018 have much in common with their 2000 predecessors, but the financial infrastructure behind them is different by at least an order of magnitude. Thanks to Mayor Bloomberg and his friends, they will never be short of money.