Everytown’s latest weapon in their war on the AR-15
Everytown's authors are armed with Superscripts.
by Lee Williams
I have never understood why anyone would work for the anti-gun team—especially writers. It’s got to be incredibly maddening and extremely difficult given their complete disassociation from the truth.
They’ve been outed so many times for outright lies, fraudulent data, fake news stories and completely false claims—it’s a miracle anyone believes anything they put into print.
Everytown’s senior staffers—those above the age of 30—have got to be wondering one thing: How to make people actually believe their tripe is true.
After reading Everytown’s fictitious work: “Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines,” which was recently updated and featured in their sister publication, The Smoking Gun, under a sexy headline: “New Report: Assault Weapons Lead to Surge in Mass Shooting Victims,” it became clear exactly what Everytown is using to regain the public’s trust.
Superscripts!
That’s right.
Superscripts.
Superscripts are tiny little numbers that are used to link academic footnotes, trademarks, supporting stories or other data into a story.
They 567 tend to make any bit of writing 58943 appear much more scholarly 23 and professional when they’re included in the report 99.
And use the superscripts Everytown sure did. There are more than 75 of them in the story.
Many of them link to dead-ends, like “Everytown research” or some other mythical place.
Still, they change the mood of the piece and make the story seem more believable, which is why they’re used.
How else could they write fiction like this: “The evidence is clear: Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are exceptionally dangerous and should be prohibited.”
Everytown authors
Those responsible for the story are almost as interesting as the craziness they cabled together. The main story was coauthored by Tannuja D. Rozario and Paige Tetens.
Ms. Rozario, who has a PhD, is Everytown’s Director of Research and Engagement. Before writing about guns she wrote about women, especially Caribbean women.
Her work includes: “HIV stigma beliefs in context: Country and regional variation in the effects of instrumental stigma beliefs on protective sexual behaviors in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southern Africa,” and “Caribbean womanism: decolonial theorizing of Caribbean women’s oppression, survival, and resistance,” and “Indo-Caribbean Feminist Epistemology: A Personal and Scholarly Journey.”
She hasn’t written all that much about guns.
Ms. Tetens is Everytown’s Senior Research Associate. According to her LinkedIn page, she hasn’t worked anywhere else.
She started in 2018 while she was still a student at Rutgers University. She progressed from Research Intern to Junior Research Consultant, to Research Fellow, to Research Associate to her current position, Senior Research Associate.
She is one of Everytown’s most published writers.
Greg Lickenbrock wrote the Smoking Gun story about the other authors’ work.
For anyone who values the Second Amendment, Mr. Lickenbrock is a disappointment.
For the past six years he has worked as a Senior Firearms Analyst for Everytown, but before that he was a gun guy, at least on paper.
Lickenbrock spent years as an editor at several well-respected outdoor magazines. Then, for some unknown reason that probably involved more money, he switched teams.
Nowadays, his work includes anti-gun stories and even testimony, anti-gun of course.
“Lickenbrock isn’t an expert on anything. He’s gun control’s convenient fool,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation wrote about him in a 2025 story.
It’s still very true.
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If Lickenbrock has given testimony in court proceedings, I wonder how they have managed to convince a judge that he qualified as an expert witness? Strike that, it would take little to no convincing for some judges already assembling their decision while trial is commencing.
A lie when repeated constantly becomes taken as fact. Joseph Goebbels and many others have used this to their advantage. I remember my former wife telling me 35 years ago that "assault rifles are the weapons of choice for drug dealers", a phrase that was doubtless repeated even then on countless network morning shows. Probably she still believes it. Fortunately, now we have alternate news sources that tell the truth about guns, and there are far more Americans who actually own a so-called "assault rifle."