After Rally, Moms Target Congress

Hundreds of mothers brimming with confidence following a Washington rally focussed their energy Monday on Capitol Hill in a lobbying effort that could lead to tighter gun control laws.

The organizers behind Sunday's "Million Mom March," attended by tens of thousands of mothers, many accompanied by children and husbands, said the real work begins with breaking the gridlock in the Republican-run Congress.

"We want Congress to sit up, pay attention and know that we moms are serious about this. We really are the majority of Americans in this country who want stricter gun laws," march organizer Donna Dees-Thomases told CBS News on Sunday.

CBS News Correspondent Bob Fuss reports Democratic senators invited some of those who lost children to gun violence to share their stories Monday.

"I can understand the frustration that people must feel as they look to Washington," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said today at a Democratic-sponsored event to promote gun control legislation.

Daschle blamed the impasse on the intransigence of a "few powerful" lawmakers.

Patty Nielson, a Columbine High School art teacher shot and wounded during the attack on the Colorado school last year, said: "I cannot believe that in the year since the tragedy at Columbine, Congress has done nothing to protect our kids from gun violence. Nothing."

Organizers of the rally principally want trigger locks to protect children and a national system that would register handguns and license their owners. They intend to maintain an activist movement that will endorse and oppose political candidates based on gun control positions.

All major gun control legislation before Congress has been stalled for a year.

CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv reports the "Million Mom March," billed as the largest gun-control rally in history, lived up to its expectations, if not its name. Organizers estimated 750,000 demonstrators attended the Washington march, where participants filled half a dozen blocks on the grassy area framed by the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, Congress and the Washington Monument.

Talk show host Rosie O'Donnell told the crowd in Washington, "Thirty thousand people are shot dead every year in this country. Over four thousand of them are children. We've had enough."

Organizers of the rally are releasing gun control commercials in the days following the march and hope they can keep the cause and the movement alive well past Sunday. One commercial features a little boy finding a gun in a drawer and accidentally shooting himself.

First lady Hillary Clinton, who marched but did not speak said, "We don't want flowers or jewelry, we don't want a nice card or a fancy meal, as much as we want our Congress to do the right thing to protect our children."

With an outpouring of emotions, the mothers here on the National Mall turned their holiday into a bittersweet day of grieving, reflection, and political activism.

Erni Bridges, whose son was killed by a handgun, said, "It makes no sense that someone who wanted to make a contribution to his country is gone, a life cut short."

Jane Young's daughter was eight-and-a-half months pregnant when she was gunned down. She said, "When pregnant mothers start getting murdered on our streets in Springfield, Virginia, something has to be done."

Just a short distance away pro-gun opponents also rallied in Washington, but in far smaller numbers.

The group calling itself "Sisters for the Second Amendment" argued Americans have the right to arm themselves.

They were booed along Constitution Avenue, and their message was drowned out by the drumbeat for reform at the "Million Mom March." The mothers, united by stories of suffering, vowed to take on the powerful gun lobby, and those in Congress who're holding up new gun control laws.

A CBS News/New York Times poll finds strong support for certain specific gun control measures. Two-thirds of those polled favor a nationwide ban on assault weapons and 84 percent favor requiring gun makers to put child safety locks on handguns.

Those sentiments were heard from coast to coast as the message of the march echoed across the country. Among them was a now-famous hamlet in New York state, which proved that this will be one hot issue in the upcoming election, reports CBS News Correspondent Jaqueline Adams.

Organizers expected only 50 people to show up in suburban Chappaqua, New York. When more than 2,00 protestors assembled, it was the biggest crowd anyone in Hillary Clinton's new home town had ever seen there.

For many, it was their first attempt at grass-roots activism.

Instead of breakfast in bed on this Mother's Day, many said the chance to send a message to Congress, to register their horror at America's series of school shootings, struck a chord they didn't even know they had.

Kathie Swenson said: "There are too many guns in the wrong hands. Too many kids that have access to them, and I worry about that a lot."

Helen Fay said she has never marched before, adding, "This is something that is dear to the hearts of every mother."

Many of the marchers had sisters or daughters who traveled to Washington, but the issue of gun control was so important, they felt they had to hit the pavement themselves.

Jill Brook said, "This gives us mothers pride that we're saying: We want to protect our children and we're doing something about it."

A handful of gun supporters did show up. But their numbers paled compared to the moms who gave the counter-demonstrators an earful.

And so it went across the country. In Boston, mothers who'd lost children to gun violence shared their pain. And from Columbus, Ohio to Austin, Texas, demonstrators marched in solidarity.

Can protests like these actually change gun laws?

That may depend not on how well the march was organized but how well it is followed up, reports CBS News Correspondent Diana Olick.

Jeff Goodwin, a New York University researcher who studies mass protests, says a well-organized march can still make a difference.

Goodwin says, "The best protest in a way is protest that begets more protest, keeps the ball rolling."

The 1963 civil rights march on Washington, for example, was relatively small by today's standards, but is one of the most well-remembered in history, because it was a highpoint of a greater movement that led to the passage of the civil rights act.

Gay rights activist Leslie Cagan says, "A march is not only about the day itself. It’s got to be about the process leading up to it and what comes after it."

She cites the millennium march for gay rights last month as an example of a march that didn't work.

She says, "It wasn't inclusive enough to really expand the meaning of who is in this movement."

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