On Tuesday, liberal activists expressed outrage at a group of male New Hampshire legislators who wore pearl necklaces at a committee hearing. Shannon Watts, the founder of a gun control group, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, posted an image of the lawmakers, all Republicans, on Twitter and accused them of mocking her group’s volunteers and others who were testifying.

The intended message of the pearls wasn’t entirely clear, although one interpretation was that the lawmakers were trying to paint members of the group as “pearl clutchers” — suggesting that they were being overly sensitive. People responding to the tweet attacked the men pictured, calling them bullies and their behavior malicious and cruel.

Two Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, weighed in on Twitter in support of Moms Demand Action, which is an arm of Everytown For Gun Safety, the gun control group financed by Michael Bloomberg. “These moms are fighting to confront gun violence and protect our children,” Harris said. “They don’t deserve to be mocked.”

But a different narrative soon emerged: Kimberly Morin, the president of a gun rights group, told the New Hampshire Union Leader that her group had distributed the pearls. The hearing was over a proposed “red flag” bill, which would allow courts to temporarily take guns from people found to be an immediate risk to themselves or others.

In an interview Wednesday, Morin said the pearls were not meant to mock anyone but had for years been a symbol for her group, the Women’s Defense League of New Hampshire, which offers firearms training to women as well as advocating gun rights.

“She’s lying,” Morin said of Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action. “That’s my comment — she’s lying.”

For her part, Watts said Morin’s group was backing away from the necklaces’ original intent. “It started out meant to mock Moms Demand Action volunteers,” she insisted.

Morin traced the origin of the symbolic pearls to 2015. After a hearing that year on a bill to allow people to carry concealed guns without a permit, an anonymous Moms Demand Action volunteer was quoted as saying that many potential opponents of the bill did not testify because they were intimidated, Morin said.

“People really don’t like to come and stand in front of a ‘firing squad’ — a group of people with guns,” the volunteer told WMUR, a local television station.

Morin said her group found the statement absurd. That day, some in her group were dressed in business suits — and, as it happened, pearls — hardly the attire of a “firing squad.” It was that sequence of events that led the group to make pearls their signature, she said. (The bill was ultimately signed by Gov. Chris Sununu in 2017 at a ceremony rife with pearl necklaces.)

New Hampshire has among the least restrictive gun laws in the country, and support for gun rights is strong. Democrats took control of both chambers of the legislature in November and are pushing a package of bills aimed at setting limits on guns, including bills requiring background checks for commercial gun purchases, creating a waiting period between the purchase and delivery of a gun, and allowing school districts to create gun-free zones.

The bills face considerable odds, given that Sununu, a Republican, has expressed opposition to any changes to the state’s gun laws, a position his spokesman reiterated Wednesday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.