By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
It appears the anti-gun nonprofit 97Percent has returned, although there have been massive internal changes and it is much less now than it used to be.
We haven’t heard much from them since they plagiarized photos of top female shooters to gaslight the public into believing they were not an anti-gun group.
97Percent’s one time executive director, Elizabeth Troye—once a senior advisor to Vice President Mike Pence—has been scrubbed from the group’s website.
In her place is Christopher Carita, an ex-cop who just last year was denied a disability pension by Fort Lauderdale’s Police and Firefighter Pension Board by a 4-3 vote. Apparently, a majority of the board members didn’t believe Carita was suffering from PTSD, because his application did not meet the criteria for being “service connected, permanent and total.”
Carita’s takeover appears to be solely to increase support for his current work, which is holding classes on “red flag” laws, which he calls Extreme Risk Protection Orders, or ERPOs.
Carita, it should be pointed out, is a huge ERPO proponent, even though they are only law in 21 states.
Other than advocating for Carita’s classes and workshops, 97Percent’s website has, for now, remained mostly the same.
97Percent took its name from a long debunked Quinnipiac poll that falsely claimed 97% of Americans supported mandatory background checks. The group calls the remaining 3-percent “loud voices who have crowded out conversation and prevented collaboration between gun owners and non-gun owners.”
97Percent has never addressed the problems associated with polling gun owners, including our unwillingness to tell strangers there are firearms in our homes—especially over the phone. Instead, the group claimed it focuses on policies that both gun owners and non-gun owners support. Both sides, the group says, share the common goal of keeping our communities safe.
But even despite its new executive director, research has shown that 97Percent is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill anti-gun organization, overseen by a board of hardcore anti-gun zealots.
Here are some of 97Percent’s activities:
- 97Percent has supported an “assault weapon” ban.
- 97Percent has supported a standard-capacity magazine ban.
- 97Percent has supported a bump-stock ban.
- 97Percent has supported expanded red-flag laws.
- 97Percent has supported permits to carry firearms.
- 97Percent has supported permits to purchase firearms.
- 97Percent has supported permits to possess firearms.
- 97Percent has supported the loss of Second Amendment rights upon conviction of a “violent misdemeanor.”
- 97Percent has supported mandatory storage laws, which would lead to mandatory home inspections by police.
- 97Percent has supported mandatory background checks, without acknowledging they would lead to mandatory firearm registration and the creation of a national gun registry.
- 97Percent claims the Second Amendment is “overprotected.”
- 97Percent claims “rapid fire guns” are not used for hunting or home defense but doesn’t define the term.
- 97Percent claims popular semi-automatic firearms are “weapons of war.”
- 97Percent claims constitutional carry results in increased homicide rates.
- 97Percent’s advisory board is stocked with radical anti-gun extremists, including a former president of the Brady campaign.
Carita in charge
According to his group’s website, Carita claims he has “six years of experience in Threat Response and Extreme Risk Protection Order Implementation, and 10 years in Criminal Investigations in his 20-year law enforcement career.”
“Christopher earned his Master of Public Health with a focus on violence prevention as a BAHI Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and currently advises at the National ERPO Center on implementation. He is also a DHS Master Trainer for Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management,” the website states.
During one of his training videos, Carita claimed his group has a “strong focus on bringing gun owners into policy discussions.”
However, Carita did not respond to phone calls, texts or emails sent via his website, so there’s at least one gun owner he doesn’t want to bring into any policy discussion. Also, his website’s “contact us” and “media inquiries” buttons have both been disconnected.
“Most gun owners agree ERPOs are good,” he said in the video. “An ERPO is a valuable tool—a court order that prevents someone from possessing or purchasing firearms.”
Most gun owners view them as just another way for the government to unconstitutionally seize their firearms. I don’t know one gun owner who actually believes “ERPOs are good.”
Carita addressed how ERPOs can change law enforcement’s longstanding traditional role.
“An ERPO is a shift for law enforcement, from pure enforcement to prevention,” he said in the video.
One Florida lawmaker recently proposed a bill that would repeal the Parkland-era red-flag laws throughout the state.
Carita has already written several anti-gun stories, which the traditional media has picked up. Just last year, he wrote how Florida’s open-carry ruling “put Florida law enforcement in a tough spot.”
He created a Florida Risk Protection Order working group on LinkedIn. Currently, it has nine members, including Carita.
Anti-gun board of directors
Anyone who believes 97Percent is not an anti-gun group need only look at their board of directors, which has not changed much.
Board member Richard Aborn served as president of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and as president of Handgun Control Inc., which became the Brady Campaign. According to Aborn’s bio, “He was a principal strategist behind the passing of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act as well as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.”
Board members John Goodwin and Abra Belke were both federal lobbyists for the National Rifle Association, until they broke with the NRA. Goodwin has since become an anti-gun resource for the legacy media.
An official with the National Shooting Sports Foundation said board members Congressmen Steve Israel and Seth Moulton, “never stood to protect the Second Amendment rights. Just the opposite.”
Board member Ketch Secor, founder of the Old Crow Medicine Show band, published a guest essay in The New York Times titled: “Country Music Can Lead America Out of its Obsession with Guns.”
“It’s time for country music makers to use their platforms to speak candidly to their conservative audiences,” Secor wrote. “Our outrage needs to move from the green room to center stage.”
Board member Michael Wear served in the White House during President Barack Obama’s first term and was in charge of religious outreach for Obama’s re-election campaign. He is extremely anti-gun.
In 2021, after the Texas House passed a constitutional carry bill, board member Mark McKinnon took to Twitter.
“It’s not The Onion. The Texas House of Representatives just passed a legislation that allows people to carry guns WITHOUT a permit/license. So, they think it should be easier to carry a gun and harder to vote,” McKinnon posted.
In 2022, McKinnon coauthored a guest column that was published by The Hill, which actually claimed gun owners want more gun control.
Takeaways
As we said in a previous story, 97Percent leadership will never have a conversation with gun owners they claim they want as long as the group advocates for “assault weapon” bans, magazine bans, bump-stock bans, expanded red-flag laws, mandatory permits to purchase, carry and possess firearms, mandatory storage laws or expanded background checks.
As a result, 97Percent remains nothing but a second-rate anti-gun group, regardless of who’s in charge.
Larry Keane is the senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearm industry’s trade association.
He and the NSSF are well aware of the group.
Said Keane: “This 97Percent group is nothing but a Trojan Horse pretending to be something other than what it is. It is a gun control group backed by gun control money, pretending to be something neutral, such as a gun owner group. But as we have pointed out in the past, they haven’t ever identified a single piece of gun-control legislation they feel should be appealed. They only want more gun control. This person is an ERPO champion, none of which have any due process. They are fooling nobody. It’s just an attempt to drive a wedge between gun owners and the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation, who truly represent the interests of gun owners.”
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