Gun control organizations in the United States are led by a small set of national groups that divide the work along predictable lines: Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords, and March For Our Lives handle legislation and grassroots mobilization; the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence drives most of the litigation; the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis produce the research; and professional bodies like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics supply the medical authority. Each group’s reach depends on how it is structured under the tax code, how well it can maneuver around a 2005 federal immunity statute, and how courts are reading the Second Amendment after recent Supreme Court decisions.
Legislation and Grassroots Mobilization
Everytown for Gun Safety is the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country, and it operates as an umbrella over several specialized branches. Moms Demand Action, its grassroots arm, runs chapters in all 50 states with volunteers who meet with lawmakers, testify at hearings, and organize locally. Students Demand Action applies the same model on college and high school campuses through roughly 1,000 groups nationwide. The umbrella also includes Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan coalition of city leaders focused on enforcement and data collection, and the Everytown Survivor Network, which connects people affected by gun violence with advocacy pathways.1Everytown for Gun Safety. About Everytown for Gun Safety The layered structure lets the organization respond quickly to legislative developments at both the state and federal level.
Giffords, founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, works the political and policy sides in parallel. Its political action committee funds candidates who support firearm regulations, and its legal arm drafts model legislation for state lawmakers. One of its most-cited tools is the Annual Gun Law Scorecard, which grades every state on the strength of its firearm laws and compares those grades against CDC gun death data. The scorecard assigns point values to individual policies based on their measured effectiveness, producing a state-by-state ranking that advocacy groups and legislators regularly reference.2GIFFORDS. Annual Gun Law Scorecard
March For Our Lives emerged from the 2018 Parkland school shooting and works differently from the professionalized groups above. Its core strategy is political mobilization: voter registration drives, large demonstrations, and direct pressure campaigns targeting elected officials. The movement centers the experiences of students who have lived through school shootings, and while its policy platform overlaps with Everytown on issues like expanded background checks, it brings a generational energy that has measurably increased youth turnout around gun-related ballot measures.
Litigation Against Dealers and Manufacturers
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has built its reputation primarily through civil litigation against firearm dealers and manufacturers. The organization represents victims of gun violence in court, targeting dealers who facilitated illegal sales or failed to follow basic safety protocols. In one landmark case against an Oregon gun dealer involved in online straw sales, two judges rejected the dealer’s claim of federal immunity, and the case resulted in a monetary settlement exceeding $750,000 along with business reforms.3Brady United. Brady Center and Cohen Milstein Announce Landmark Settlement More recently, Brady won a $62 million verdict against a ghost gun dealer in Baltimore, described by the organization as the largest verdict against a gun dealer in American history.4Brady United. Largest Ever Verdict Dealt Against Gun Dealer Rendered for the City of Baltimore
The Federal Immunity Shield
Every lawsuit against a gun manufacturer or dealer runs into the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 federal law that broadly prohibits civil liability claims against the firearms industry when someone criminally misuses a weapon. It is the single biggest legal obstacle gun control litigators face, and it bars most negligence and product liability theories that succeed in other industries.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 7903 – Definitions
The statute does carve out exceptions, and those exceptions are where Brady and similar groups concentrate their efforts. A lawsuit can proceed if the dealer or manufacturer knowingly violated a federal or state law related to the sale or marketing of the firearm and that violation caused the harm. This includes cases where a seller helped facilitate a straw purchase or falsified required records. Claims for negligent entrustment, product defects in design or manufacture, and breach of contract or warranty also survive immunity.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 7903 – Definitions Much of the litigation creativity in this space involves framing claims to fit within those narrow openings.
Defending Laws After Bruen and Rahimi
The 2022 Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen changed how courts evaluate firearm regulations. The Court struck down New York’s concealed carry licensing requirement and held that any modern gun law must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.6Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc., et al. v. Bruen, Superintendent of New York State Police, et al. That ruling triggered a wave of challenges to existing regulations, and gun control organizations shifted into a defensive posture, filing amicus briefs and supplying courts with historical evidence that specific types of restrictions have deep roots in American law.
The picture improved for these groups in 2024, when the Court decided United States v. Rahimi and upheld a federal law that temporarily disarms individuals a court has found to pose a credible threat to another person’s physical safety. The Court found the restriction fits within historical traditions of disarming dangerous individuals, including colonial-era surety laws and “going armed” statutes.7Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Rahimi Rahimi gave advocates their strongest post-Bruen precedent, indicating that the historical tradition test does not automatically defeat modern firearm restrictions aimed at people who pose demonstrated risks.
Research and Federal Funding
The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions is among the most influential academic institutions working on firearm policy. Based at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, it combines researchers and public health advocates to study gun violence as an epidemic-level emergency, with attention to how it disproportionately affects vulnerable communities. Its work spans national gun violence data, state-level policy analysis, suicide prevention, and public carry permitting models.8Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Center for Gun Violence Solutions Peer-reviewed findings from Hopkins and similar institutions provide the statistical backbone for most major policy proposals in this space.
The Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, takes a complementary approach focused on community-based interventions and how regional regulatory environments affect violence rates. Its research frequently examines the link between firearm access and domestic violence, producing data that informs risk-based policy proposals like extreme risk protection orders.
This research infrastructure is relatively young for a specific reason. In 1996, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment, which effectively froze federal funding for gun violence research at the CDC for more than two decades. The amendment did not technically ban research, but its chilling effect was severe enough that agencies avoided the topic. That freeze broke in 2019, when Congress appropriated $25 million split between the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. The same $25 million allocation continues through fiscal year 2026, with $12.5 million going to each agency. That amount is modest compared to funding for other leading causes of death.
Medical and Professional Organizations
The American Medical Association has formally recognized uncontrolled firearm ownership as a serious public health threat since the 1980s, treating gun violence with the same epidemiological lens applied to car crashes or infectious disease. Its official policy calls for increased federal funding for firearm injury research, safety features on new weapons to prevent accidental discharge, and using funds recovered from firearms litigation to support gun safety education.9American Medical Association. Firearms as a Public Health Problem in the United States – Injuries and Death AMA involvement lends institutional medical authority to arguments that might otherwise be dismissed as purely political.
The American Academy of Pediatrics takes a narrower approach focused on children. It encourages pediatricians to discuss firearm safety during routine office visits and supports laws requiring secure storage to prevent children from accessing weapons in the home. The idea is to treat unsecured firearms the way doctors treat pool drowning risks or household poisons, as preventable hazards where a brief clinical intervention can save lives. More than 20 states now have some form of extreme risk protection order law, allowing courts to temporarily remove firearms from individuals in crisis, a policy both medical organizations support.
How the Tax Code Shapes What These Groups Can Do
How an organization is classified under the Internal Revenue Code determines what it can and cannot do politically. Most large gun control groups maintain parallel entities under different sections to maximize flexibility.
501(c)(3) Organizations
Groups classified under Section 501(c)(3) are completely prohibited from participating in political campaigns for or against any candidate. The IRS enforces this as an absolute ban: public statements, contributions, or any intervention on behalf of a candidate can result in revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of excise taxes.10Internal Revenue Service. Restriction of Political Campaign Intervention by Section 501(c)(3) Tax-Exempt Organizations Lobbying is permitted but capped. Organizations that elect the expenditure test under Section 501(h) can spend a percentage of their budget on lobbying, starting at 20% of the first $500,000 in exempt-purpose expenditures and declining on a sliding scale, with an absolute cap of $1 million regardless of organization size.11Internal Revenue Service. Measuring Lobbying Activity: Expenditure Test
Exceeding those limits triggers a 25% excise tax on the excess lobbying amount.12eCFR. 26 CFR 56.4911-1 – Tax on Excess Lobbying Expenditures If excessive lobbying over a four-year period actually costs an organization its 501(c)(3) status, a separate 5% tax applies to the total lobbying expenditures for the year status is lost, and individual managers who knowingly approved those expenditures face an additional 5% personal tax.13Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4912 – Tax on Disqualifying Lobbying Expenditures of Certain Organizations For that reason, the research and educational branches of gun control organizations almost always sit inside a 501(c)(3), with political activity walled off in a separate affiliate.
501(c)(4) Organizations
The political arm typically operates as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, which can make lobbying its primary activity without jeopardizing tax-exempt status.14Internal Revenue Service. Social Welfare Organizations These entities can also engage in political campaign activity, including spending on candidate-related communications, as long as campaigning does not become the organization’s primary purpose.15Internal Revenue Service. Political Campaign and Lobbying Activities of IRC 501(c)(4), (c)(5), and (c)(6) Organizations Donations to a 501(c)(4) are not tax-deductible, and that is the trade-off for greater political freedom. The dual-structure approach, with a 501(c)(3) handling research and education and a 501(c)(4) running lobbying and campaigns, is standard practice across the gun control movement.