June Hellraiser Tina Johnstone

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


For Tina Johnstone, February’s landmark verdict in Hamilton v. Accu-Tek, in which a jury found 15 gun manufacturers guilty of irresponsibly marketing and distributing firearms, was the crowning moment in a seven-year struggle to curb gun violence.

The New York case held the manufacturers liable for saturating states that had lax gun regulations with more firearms than the legal markets there could support. The practice created a market for illegal resellers, who then introduced firearms into more strictly regulated urban areas, such as New York City.

Johnstone had more than an ideological stake in the case. In 1992 her husband, David, was shot and killed by a 16-year-old in San Francisco. Because of this personal tragedy, Johnstone signed on as the suit’s first plaintiff and helped lawyer Elisa Barnes organize the case.

Legal experts expect the victory to open the floodgates for similar suits, including one by Johnstone herself: In an effort to strengthen Barnes’ suit by limiting it to New York victims, she ultimately withdrew her name as a plaintiff, but plans to file a new suit in California later this year based on her husband’s shooting.

Litigation isn’t Johnstone’s sole vehicle for hellraising. When the Senate began debating the Brady Bill in 1993, she and a friend, Ellen Freudenheim, placed hundreds of pairs of shoes — symbolizing people killed by gun violence in New York state — on the sidewalk in front of then-Sen. Alfonse D’Amato’s Manhattan office.

This eerie protest planted the seed for the first Silent March. In September 1994, Johnstone and Freudenheim collected approximately 38,300 pairs of shoes from the families of gun-violence victims and assembled them in front of the U.S. Capitol. They have since organized two other Silent Marches.

Last year, Johnstone left her job at the Staten Island Botanical Garden to help run a newly founded, yet-to-be-named organization created to support grassroots gun control groups across the country.

Taking on deep-pocketed gun manufacturers and a formidable gun lobby is a challenging task, especially for a single mother of two. But while Johnstone admits to feeling tired, she is not about to give up. “If we had national gun licensing in this country, we would have fewer deaths,” she says. “It has to happen.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate