The DC Project is one of the most effective Second Amendment organizations that most non-gun owners have never heard of, and I’m thrilled that founder Dianna Muller could join me on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co with updates on the grassroots organizations ongoing efforts to defend the right to keep and bear arms and counter anti-gun activists, including an upcoming rally at the Indiana state capitol slated for this Friday.

We’ve highlighted some of the DCP’s efforts here in the past, including their work to help secure passage of Florida’s new permitless carry law, DC Project member Kathleen Gilligan’s million dollar grant to reduce veteran suicide, and the election of member Rebecca Schmoe to the Kansas legislature, where she’s already having an impact. Muller is rightfully proud of those successes and the women behind them, and she believes the group will be even more influential in the gun control debate going forward; not only by providing a counter to the red-shirted moms demanding gun control, but by offering up real solutions to violent crime that don’t involve stripping Americans of their fundamental right to self-defense.

In fact, at the DCP’s website gun owners can download a free one-page sheet of quick facts and data points promoting those solutions and pushing back on things like universal background checks, “red flag” laws, and storage mandates for gun owners. Muller says it’s crucial that gun owners be armed with the facts in order to be effective advocates.

“You can’t go straight to ‘my cold dead hands’ or ‘shall not be infringed’ stuff because it’s just cold. They [gun control activists] are speaking from emotional perspectives, and you have to have some empathy first, facts, and solutions.”

Muller’s hoping to make some headlines this Friday in Indianapolis. With the NRA’s Annual Meetings kicking off in the city that day, Muller and her fellow grassroots activists will be gathering outside the convention center’s Maryland/Capitol St. entrance and marching two blocks to the state capitol where the group will hold a press conference. The DC Project head says that all are welcome, and I’d encourage anyone who’s going to be at the NRA meetings to join the women of the DC Project as they provide a pro-Second Amendment counter to the protests in favor of criminalizing the right to keep and bear arms that we’ve seen at the state capitol in Nashville, Tennessee.

While Muller says DCP has been doing a lot of state-level work, the group isn’t ignoring the “DC” in their name. The group was originally formed to give federal lawmakers a chance to hear from gun-owning women, and Muller tells Bearing Arms that they’ll be heading back to Washington, D.C. in October of this year to spend some time on Capitol Hill.

“We don’t call it ‘Lobby Day.’ I don’t like the ‘l’ word. We’re advocates, truly grassroots advocates. We’re all volunteers, and I like to remind folks that Moms Demand Action thinks they’re grassroots. They may have started that way but they’re totally astroturf now. They’re a Bloomberg-funded group, up to $60-million a few years ago, and that’s tough to compete with.”

Yet somehow Muller and her amazing cohorts are doing just that, and there’s only room to grow from here. Be sure to check out the entire conversation with Dianna Muller in the video window below, and check out DCproject.info to become a member or show your support.