INDIANAPOLIS — Wearing pearls and an orange T-shirt, Stephanie Grabow stood out in a somber crowd gathered for an interfaith vigil last Thursday to remember victims of the mass shooting in Orlando.
Grabow wasn't there just to pray and mourn. She was asking attendees to turn sadness into action by demanding that lawmakers limit access to guns.
Grabow may seem an unlikely advocate for gun restrictions. A Republican who once held a political appointment in the Statehouse, she comes from a gun-owning family and calls herself a shooter.
But when the National Rifle Association held its annual conference in Indianapolis in 2014, some of her friends invited to the NRA Women's Leadership Forum luncheon assumed — incorrectly — that she'd be supportive of their cause, as well.
Now, she's volunteer head of the Indiana chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. The group has adopted orange as a symbolic color, worn to inspire action.
The organization was founded by mothers — including Zionsville resident Shannon Watts — after the 2012 mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 children and six adults. The mentally ill shooter had a cache of ammunitions and weapons, including a semi-automatic rifle.
Grabow, the mother of a first-grader at the time, said the horrific incident illustrated that the country's gun laws are "out of control."
When she decided to get involved with Moms Demand Action, she brought with her inside knowledge of how the Statehouse works. She's also a graduate of the Richard G. Lugar Excellence in Public Service Series — a year-long training, founded in 1990 by the former U.S. senator — designed as a pathway to politics for select Republican women.
"It's helped that I know my way around," she said.
It's helped especially at a time when Congress has been unable or unwilling to act.
Key measures supported by Moms Demand Action — including a universal background check for gun buyers and a ban on sales to those on terror watch lists — have stalled on the federal level.
That's why the group is turning its attention to statehouses, pushing for what it calls common-sense laws that abide by the Second Amendment.
The moms have seen some success. Nine states now have legislation blocking domestic abusers from owning guns. In 2014, the state of Washington passed its own version of a universal background check; Nevada and Maine have similar initiatives on their ballots.
In Indiana, Grabow said Moms Demand Action is slowly building groundwork for a universal background check and has already helped push back some bad laws. That included pitching in to stop four bills, all NRA-backed, that would have further loosened the state's already liberal gun laws this past legislative session.
One would have lifted restrictions on repeat alcohol offenders from obtaining handgun licenses.
Sen. Jim Tomes, R-Wadesville, an NRA member, was the author of that bill. He said Grabow's efforts are misplaced because they focus on a "chunk of steel" and not on the social ills that drive violence.
He also doesn't see the "common sense" behind what she and the Moms Demand Action group are advocating. He argues, in part, that criminals and terrorists aren't dissuaded by "thousands of gun laws" now on the books.
"There are no more laws to be written on guns," he said.
Grabow said that sentiment has been strongly held in states like Indiana but is turning. And she's convinced that urgency is building with every senseless shooting.
"The house is on fire," she said. "We can't wait to put it out."