From Advocacy to Action: Everytown Pushes Gun Control & Teaches Gun Use Too

Everytown gun safety training: The advertisements for guns training that appeared on the computer screens of some gun violence advocates made them rethink their approach. Gun owners may now take classes offered by Everytown for Gun Safety, a group known for promoting tougher gun legislation and reducing bloodshed.

According to the organizers, the Zoom-style or on-demand courses are focused on safety and accountability without any overt salesmanship.

Due to the abundance of concealed carry and pistol programs conducted by the National Rifle Association and other organizations, gun rights organizations responded to the debut with mockery for the newcomer.

Additionally, Everytown’s network of grassroots chapters and volunteers who fight to prevent gun violence might get enraged with the new initiative, Train SMART. Others left their seats, while others flinched at the launch.

However, Everytown’s approach to gun safety education has its place, according to the program’s authors.

According to Chris Marvin, Everytown’s veterans adviser who assisted in creating the curriculum, which costs $20 to $100 and offers sessions that run 90, 150, and even eight hours, “it looks more like what a grandfather teaches a grandson than what you get in the back room of a gun shop.”

The course was created by Marvin, a former Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army, and other veterans to replicate military training from reliable sources.

The initiative is being launched at a time when the country is seeing widespread and politicized gun violence. Any changes to federal gun restrictions in Washington, D.C., provide ongoing challenges for the organization.

The training could also be a symptom of a larger movement away from “abstinence” message and toward what scholars refer to as a “harm reduction” paradigm toward firearms.

Only recently did gun sales decline after six years of smashing records. Between August 2019 and July 2025, 87 million background checks were conducted in the sector, or more than one million per month. During that time, 26 million individuals are said to have purchased their first firearm.

Marvin with Everytown said, “This is a signal to gun owners and prospective gun owners that you can own a gun and still be vocally against gun violence and steadfastly in favor of safety.” Next year, they want to include in-person and range sessions.

The decision “shocked” members of the violence prevention group.
Apart from derision from gun advocacy organizations, the initiative encountered strong resistance from its own participants and ardent backers.

Sandy Phillips doesn’t like the training. After losing a case against the corporations who provided their daughter’s killer ammunition, tear gas, and body armor, Phillips, whose daughter Jessica Ghawi, 24, was slain in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre, has long fought against makers of weapons and ammunition, even going bankrupt.

“What they’re doing to survivors is really offensive and painful. I’m thinking, “Oh my God, how could any survivor still be there for them?” Phillips said to USA TODAY. “People are bewildered and wounded. Our goal is to prevent gun violence and prevent individuals from owning firearms in their homes, and you are promoting gun ownership by offering a gun safety course. It’s impossible to have it both ways.

Phillips has long attacked Moms Demand Action, Everytown, and Brady for what she considers to be an inefficient and top-down methodology. After filing for bankruptcy, she and her spouse reportedly contributed to a change in Colorado legislation that made it simpler to bring lawsuits against gun manufacturers. According to Phillips, the major gun-violence organizations are more concerned with maintaining their existence and generating funds than they are with finding solutions to issues.

We should have accomplished more and gained more ground by now. “They have a lot of good they could do, but they keep failing to do it,” she remarked. “They didn’t ask anyone for their input, and if they had, we would have told you ‘don’t do this.'”

Mayors Against Illegal Guns gave rise to Everytown in 2013, which later joined with Moms Demand Action, which is now a part of the group. In terms of lobbying and money, the group is gradually catching up to gun rights organizations.

Open Secrets estimates that Everytown spent almost $2.3 million on federal lobbying last year. This is in contrast to the NRA’s $2 million, Gun Owners of America’s $2.4 million, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s $7 million.

Deborah Parker of Arizona quit her job as the head of a local victim organization because she was so outraged by the Train SMART launch. In 2006, Lindsay, her 19-year-old daughter, was shot and died.

The program caught my attention on Facebook. “It was like getting kicked in the teeth,” Parker said. “It’s absurd that after years of working on broader background checks and the knowledge that owning a gun in the house won’t make you safer.”

According to Parker, Everytown was wasting valuable resources on “reinventing the wheel” in training when they could just connect to pre-existing, politically neutral firearms training programs.

Everytown hears criticism, but it doesn’t care.

“Any new program comes with a mix of curiosity, enthusiasm, and skepticism,” according to Everytown President John Feinblatt. They will be gathering input from the 200 courses that have already been completed as well as 10 pilot states.

According to him, Everytown was never intended to be seen as anti-gun or hardline gun control, but rather as a broad tent that included gun owners, which is what he claims inspired the name.

“We examined the current market and found that it is largely based on fear,” Feinblatt said. “It’s really just gun industry marketing masquerading as training.”

However, every firearms training course must address some of the most important responses to challenging questions that learners may ask.

Do I need to purchase a gun? Should my loaded rifle be kept close to my bed? Will owning a gun make me safer at home?

Veterans trainer Marvin said that although their responses are complex, the Everytown training would concentrate on unambiguous statistics: It is true that owning a weapon increases the possibility that someone in your house may be shot; No, a loaded handgun should not be left unlocked on your bedside table. According to Marvin, purchasing a firearm should not necessarily be the main component of your home protection strategy.

When someone in the family is experiencing mental health issues, Marvin said, teachers will explain a storage balance that leans toward safes that can still be accessed quickly.

“A lot of folks believe that a gun would solve all of their issues. “It could be suicide, a disagreement with a neighbor, or the person who cut you off in traffic,” Marvin said. “However, similar to the military, we will discuss a range of force and non-lethal methods of problem solving.”

Others assert that any training is preferable than none, while the NSSF and NRA respond.
Following the August release of information about the new initiative, Larry Keane, Senior Vice President of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, viewed it with skepticism.

He listed Everytown-supported ideas in a blog post, including expanded permits, waiting periods, age limits, red flag legislation, and gun-free zones.

Gun owners would be better off going to their neighborhood gun store or range, Keane said, adding that it would be “like getting barbecuing lessons from vegans.”

Similarly, the NRA posted a mocking article about the program, pointing out that it has been teaching gun safety for 150 years and that it has an estimated 125,000 instructors throughout the country who train hundreds of thousands of students annually.

The group said, “Our instructors won’t tell you that you shouldn’t have certain firearms that are legal to own,” in response to Everytown’s plans to restrict some semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines.

Although he was restrained in his criticism, Rob Pincus, a veteran of the firearms business who oversees his own training program, Personal Defense Network, viewed the new curriculum with skepticism.

When asked whether gun retailers, ammo distributors, and ranges would want to partner with the organization, Pincus said, “I think that’s partly because they aren’t getting anywhere with gun bans.”

However, Pincus said that more chances for instruction on the proper ownership and usage of weapons are preferable.