Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from producer Raymond Rapada. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Lauren | Email Myah | Email Lawrence PETER AMBLER, the longtime executive director of the gun violence prevention group Giffords, is stepping down after 10 years with the organization. He won’t leave the movement entirely — he's staying on board with Giffords as an adviser — but his departure represents a major changing of the guard for one of the more important advocacy communities in the progressive tent. At a coffee shop in Southeast D.C., he shared the news with POLITICO. He also talked about his time at the vanguard of the gun policy debates; from the lows (like the phone call he received as a young legislative director when his boss, then-Rep. GABBY GIFFORDS, was shot in the head) to the highs (passage of reform legislation this past year). This conversation has been edited for length. Why step down now? I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I was at a dinner with David Axelrod two months ago. He was at the other end of the table. I guess he just left the University of Chicago. Like “Oh, why are you leaving?” And he basically perked his head up and said, “Nobody should run anything for more than 10 years.” I was like, “Alright, Peter.” It sort of jolted me. Not only have the politics around guns changed, but so has the make-up of the movement. There are a ton of organizations now instead of just the big players. I’ve heard a lot along the way, “Well there’s just one NRA, shouldn’t there be just one anti-NRA?” Oftentimes what matters as much as message is messenger. And being able to have different leaders and different institutions that are coming at this problem from different perspectives is very helpful. What approach have you found works best for moving Biden? The day that Manchin-Toomey [the gun proposal to expand background checks] was filibustered, Gabby was sitting with then-Vice President Biden. And she was devastated. The vice president said something like, “Gabby, this is a dark day for the Congress and for the country. But what you’ll see here is this will catalyze people.” And that’s exactly what happened. To an extent, we elevate the issue and partner with his administration and his advisers and provide the infrastructure that’s necessary from the outside. He’s somebody that you need to support his policymaking and his work as president more than you need to hold his feet to the fire. But even with Biden, progress has been incremental. It’s been incremental by necessity. He hasn’t done, like, literally everything, right? But I know he’s considered literally everything and done the vast majority of it. Like any president, there’s a limit to their executive authority. I describe our approach as sort of radical incrementalism. What’s been the hardest part of your time as executive director? I thought that when Gabby was shot, that that would be the most personally I would ever be connected to a tragedy. But one thing that happened along the way is that I had kids. The day of Uvalde, it was also the last day of my daughter’s [transitional kindergarten]. So I go to the “graduation.” I’m there, and I’m watching this tragedy unfold. A couple days later, my wife and I were taking her to her first day of summer camp. She just starts talking in the backseat, and she started talking about a lockdown drill that she’d done in school. And she talked about the kids shot at a different school, asking if that was going to happen to her? Having a very real human experience like that… It just makes me furious. Do you feel like you’re leaving with more optimism than when you began? I’m an optimistic person. I think that the gun safety movement, with Giffords as a very critical part of it, has proven the doubters wrong. We’ve punched above our weight. What did Gabby say when you told her your news? She said, “Sad. End of an era.” MESSAGE US — Are you THERESA BRADLEY, White House presidential speechwriter? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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