Mark Glaze, who was broadly thought-about a founding determine within the trendy gun-control motion, died on Oct. 31 in Scranton, Pa. He was 51.
Erika Soto Lamb, a pal and former colleague on the group Everytown for Gun Security, the place Mr. Glaze was a former govt director, stated his loss of life was a suicide. Mr. Glaze had been in jail after being arrested on a cost of driving beneath the affect in September.
Mr. Glaze was already a veteran political organizer in January 2011 when he joined Mayors In opposition to Unlawful Weapons, a company that was based by Michael R. Bloomberg and greater than a dozen different mayors. He labored for the group half time, as a advisor on mortgage from the Raben Group, a public affairs agency.
Gun violence was on the time a kind of points that Washington insiders in comparison with the climate: one thing everybody talked about however nobody did something to vary. The Nationwide Rifle Affiliation managed the subject, cajoling even average Democrats to oppose any effort to control firearms.
A decade later, gun violence is a profitable concern for a lot of state and native governments, the N.R.A. is in tatters and Congress is more and more prepared to face up for gun security — a drastic shift that many attribute to Mr. Glaze’s tireless organizing and good strategizing.
“Mark unquestionably was one of many architects of the gun security motion,” John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Security, stated in a telephone interview.
The modifications occurred over a number of years amid a collection of high-profile mass shootings. It began just a few days after Mr. Glaze joined the group, when a gunman shot 19 individuals in a parking zone in Tucson, Ariz., killing six and injuring 13, together with Consultant Gabby Giffords.
Then, on Dec. 14, 2012, a gunman killed 26 individuals, largely youngsters, at Sandy Hook Elementary College in Newtown, Conn.
Newtown was a tragedy, however as Mr. Glaze instantly acknowledged, it was additionally a possibility for motion. So did the White Home: President Barack Obama promised to place “the whole lot I’ve obtained” into passing substantial gun-control laws.
Working off a blueprint supplied by Mr. Glaze, the White Home known as for a renewed ban on assault weapons, expanded background checks and different measures. However over the following few months, regardless of widespread public assist, the invoice was whittled down by senators from each events who confronted unrelenting stress from the N.R.A.
By April, even a watered-down measure to enhance background checks did not clear the 60-vote threshold wanted to beat a filibuster.
It was a stinging defeat for Mr. Obama and the gun management motion, however Mr. Glaze noticed a silver lining. He understood what needed to be achieved: He needed to beat the N.R.A. at its personal recreation. Quite than concentrate on Washington and look forward to a mass taking pictures to spur curiosity in gun management, he would construct from the grass roots and create a everlasting stress marketing campaign on politicians at each degree, from the White Home to metropolis halls.
“They for a technology have had this discipline to themselves,” he stated of the N.R.A. in a 2013 interview with The Wall Avenue Journal. “There has actually been nothing on the opposite facet by way of grass-roots power, depth on most days or assist on Election Day.”
He resigned from the Raben Group to work full time for Mayors In opposition to Unlawful Weapons. He employed dozens of workers members and greater than doubled the variety of mayors endorsing the group. He rallied native activists and put stress on purple- and red-state Democrats, who are sometimes essentially the most attentive to N.R.A. stress. And he made himself a face of the motion, happening tv speak reveals and talking to any reporter who would hear.
“Mark was any individual who may each sit with victims and survivors of gun violence whereas additionally working on the political degree and dealing with legislators to vary the politics of the difficulty,” stated Peter Ambler, the manager director of Giffords, an anti-gun-violence group created by Ms. Giffords.
Mr. Glaze, who was homosexual, took explicit inspiration from the motion for same-sex marriage, which had for many years pushed for modifications on the state and native degree earlier than taking over Congress and the Supreme Courtroom.
“We felt keenly that there are some points the place Congress was the curtain-raiser, and a few the place it’s a finale,” Mr. Feinblatt stated.
Mr. Glaze drew equally from the historical past of Moms In opposition to Drunk Driving, which had rallied girls activists to push for more durable drinking-and-driving legal guidelines. He sought allies among the many growing variety of moms who have been main an identical cost on weapons.
In 2014, Mayors In opposition to Unlawful Weapons merged with Mothers Demand Motion for Gun Sense in America to type Everytown for Gun Security. Each organizations had obtained vital monetary assist from Mr. Bloomberg.
Mr. Glaze stepped down from Everytown just a few months later to open his personal consulting agency, however he continued to dedicate a lot of his time to gun security. He helped discovered the group Weapons Down, and he consulted for Giffords and the group Brady: United In opposition to Gun Violence.
By the point of the mass taking pictures at a highschool in Parkland, Fla., in February 2018, by which a gunman killed 17 individuals and injured 17 others, the panorama had essentially shifted. The difficulty moved into the streets, with protests and boycotts of firms that handled the N.R.A., in addition to civil lawsuits that left the gun foyer reeling.
Though Mr. Glaze by no means claimed credit score, different activists stated that shift wouldn’t have occurred with out him.
“These successes wouldn’t have been doable with out leaders like Mark who labored to right the failure of the motion within the wake of the Newtown votes,” Igor Volsky, the manager director of Weapons Down, stated in a telephone interview.
Mark Charles Glaze was born on Oct. 21, 1970, in Pueblo, Colo. His father, Charles Glaze, owned a gun retailer and belonged to the N.R.A.; his mom, Nancy Inexperienced, was a homemaker.
“In case you had advised me after I was rising up within the mountains of Colorado, taking pictures weapons on the weekend with a dad who’s an N.R.A. member and a gun vendor, that The Wall Avenue Journal would name me the face of the gun management motion, I’m unsure I’d have believed you,” Mr. Glaze stated in a video he made for Colorado School, his alma mater.
Mr. Glaze graduated from Colorado School in 1992 with a level in political financial system and obtained a legislation diploma from the George Washington College in 1996. After legislation faculty, he labored for a lot of campaign-finance reform organizations earlier than becoming a member of the Raben Group.
He’s survived by his son, Archer.
Mr. Glaze had lengthy struggled with dependancy and melancholy. His arrest got here after he fled the scene of a automotive accident.
Gun management might need been his legacy and his ardour, however Mr. Glaze stated it was one thing he had simply “stumbled into” amid his work on points like instructor unions, homosexual rights and worldwide human rights.
“The work I love to do,” he stated within the Colorado School video, “includes big-issue campaigns the place you’re attempting to vary public coverage for the higher, and people campaigns contain numerous shifting components.”
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