The anti-gun nonprofit 97Percent has quietly reemerged after lying low since getting caught plagiarizing photos of competitive female shooters to falsely portray themselves as gun-owner friendly.
The organization has undergone significant leadership changes. Former executive director Elizabeth Troye—a onetime senior advisor to Vice President Mike Pence—has been removed from the website entirely.
Taking her place is Christopher Carita, a former Fort Lauderdale police officer who was denied a disability pension just last year. The Police and Firefighter Pension Board rejected his application by a 4-3 vote, with the majority unconvinced that Carita’s claimed PTSD was “service-connected, permanent, and total.”
Carita’s Red Flag Agenda
Carita’s appointment appears designed primarily to promote his current work: teaching law enforcement agencies about “red flag” laws, which he rebrands as Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs). He’s a vocal ERPO advocate despite these laws existing in only 21 states.
Beyond pushing Carita’s classes and workshops, the 97Percent website remains largely unchanged.
The 97Percent Deception
The group takes its name from a thoroughly debunked Quinnipiac poll claiming 97% of Americans support mandatory background checks. They dismiss the remaining 3 percent as “loud voices who have crowded out conversation and prevented collaboration between gun owners and non-gun owners.”
97Percent has never acknowledged the well-documented problems with polling gun owners—particularly our reluctance to tell strangers over the phone that we own firearms. Instead, they claim to focus on “common ground” policies supported by both gun owners and non-gun owners alike.
The reality tells a different story. Research reveals 97Percent is simply another anti-gun organization run by hardline gun control advocates.
97Percent’s Anti-Gun Record
The group has advocated for:
- “Assault weapon” bans
- Standard-capacity magazine bans
- Bump stock bans
- Expanded red flag laws
- Permits to carry firearms
- Permits to purchase firearms
- Permits to possess firearms
- Stripping Second Amendment rights for “violent misdemeanor” convictions
- Mandatory storage laws (leading to warrantless home inspections)
- Mandatory background checks (without acknowledging this creates a de facto national gun registry)
97Percent has also claimed the Second Amendment is “overprotected,” that semi-automatic rifles are “weapons of war,” that “rapid fire guns” serve no hunting or self-defense purpose (without defining the term), and that constitutional carry increases homicide rates.
Their advisory board includes a former Brady Campaign president and other prominent gun control activists.
Carita’s Claims Don’t Add Up
Carita’s bio states he has “six years of experience in Threat Response and Extreme Risk Protection Order Implementation, and 10 years in Criminal Investigations.” He earned a Master of Public Health focused on violence prevention at Johns Hopkins and advises the National ERPO Center.
In training videos, Carita claims 97Percent has a “strong focus on bringing gun owners into policy discussions.”
Yet he ignored multiple phone calls, texts, and emails; apparently, at least one gun owner isn’t welcome in those discussions. The website’s “contact us” and “media inquiries” buttons are both disabled.
“Most gun owners agree ERPOs are good,” Carita said in one video. “An ERPO is a valuable tool—a court order that prevents someone from possessing or purchasing firearms.”
That’s false. Most gun owners view ERPOs as unconstitutional firearm confiscation schemes. Finding a gun owner who actually believes “ERPOs are good” would be a challenge.
Carita has described ERPOs as shifting law enforcement “from pure enforcement to prevention.”
He’s already published several anti-gun opinion pieces picked up by mainstream media. Last year, he wrote that Florida’s open carry ruling “put Florida law enforcement in a tough spot.”
His Florida Risk Protection Order working group on LinkedIn currently has nine members—including himself.
A Board of Gun Control Activists
Anyone questioning whether 97Percent is anti-gun need only examine their board of directors.
Richard Aborn served as president of both the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and Handgun Control Inc. (now the Brady Campaign). His bio boasts 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 are former NRA federal lobbyists who turned against the organization. Goodwin has become a go-to anti-gun source for legacy media.
According to a National Shooting Sports Foundation official, board members Congressmen Steve Israel and Seth Moulton “never stood to protect Second Amendment rights. Just the opposite.”
Board member Ketch Secor, founder of Old Crow Medicine Show, penned a New York Times essay titled “Country Music Can Lead America Out of its Obsession with Guns,” calling for country artists to “use their platforms to speak candidly to their conservative audiences.”
Michael Wear, who handled religious outreach for Obama’s reelection campaign, is vocally anti-gun.
Mark McKinnon tweeted after Texas passed constitutional carry in 2021: “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.”
In 2022, McKinnon co-authored a Hill op-ed claiming gun owners actually want more gun control.
The Bottom Line
97Percent will never have genuine conversations with gun owners while advocating for “assault weapon” bans, magazine restrictions, bump stock bans, expanded red flag laws, mandatory permits, storage laws, and expanded background checks.
Under Carita or anyone else, 97Percent remains a second-tier gun control group masquerading as something else.
Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, summed it up: “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 repealed. They only want more gun control. This person is an ERPO champion, none of which have any due process. They’re 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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