Guns 'N' Mamas
This Mother's Day is anything but a day off in the gun control debate.
Thousands of gun control advocates are expected to rally Sunday in Washington, D.C. and nearly 70 other communities nationwide for the Million Mom March. Their goal: to prod Congress to pass a national handgun license and registration system, and to require built-in child-safety locks and a limit of one handgun purchase a month. Their opposition: the National Rifle Association and a group of mothers who are pro-gun rights.
"The day will be emotional and a call to action," said march founder Donna Dees-Thomases.
Last year's shooting at a Jewish community center in Granada Hills, Calif., was the catalyst that spurred Dees-Thomases. Searing TV images of children fleeing an armed white supremacist haunted the suburban New Jersey woman. The tragedy spurred her and a small group of mothers to organie the march.
On Sunday, mothers from places where gun violence has hit hard will speak - towns like Littleton, Colo. and Dunblane, Scotland and Mount Morris, Mich. High profile names will have their say, too. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), whose husband was killed and son injured by bullets, will be one. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland's lieutenant governor, who lost her father, Robert F. Kennedy, to an assassin's bullets, will be another.
"We can't keep up with the demand," said Dees-Thomases about interest in the event. "I think the amount of phone calls truly reflects the majority opinion in this country. We're sick of gun violence and there are simple solutions available."
The NRA, however, has refused to concede the airwaves to an aura of All-American motherhood touting gun control. In TV and newspaper ads, the gun owners' group has opted to fight family-friendly fire with family-friendly fire. The NRA ad campaign stresses the million dollars it will spend on gun safety lessons for kids, and labels policy differences on the issue as "gun politics."
The march in Washington isn't the only rally scehduled for Sunday. In about a dozen cities, mothers who favor gun rights will gather for the Armed Informed Mother's March.
"We didn't want the Million Mom March to have a day of free press coverage where they make it seem like they speak for all women because believe me, they don't," said Debra Collins of Second Amendment Sisters, the Dallas-based group behind the counter-event, which is independent from the NRA.
Like the Million Moms, the Sisters support new gun laws, but beyond that the similarity ends. They want laws that punish violent criminals and allow law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. Collins knows about self-defense firsthand. When she was 21, she held her ex-husband at bay with a 12-gauge shotgun when he forced his way into her mother's home one night.
All this adds up to politics. Gun control legislation now languishes on Capitol Hill. A bill passed by the Senate and backed by the White House wold require child-safety locks and background checks on purchasers at gun shows. On Thursday, President Clinton was asked whether he thought the Million Mom March would persuade Congress to pass the stalled legislation.
"I don't know, but it ought to," he said.
"If a couple hundred thousand people show up here," the president added, "and several hundred thousand at these sites around the country, it ought to send a signal that we want America to be a safe country and common sense gun legislation is part of the strategy."
The White House hosts a reception on Sunday to kick off the march. Due to security precautions, Mr. Clinton won't attend the march itself. But first lady and New York Senate hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton will.
GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush, who supports trigger locks, said of the Million Mom March, "I'm glad there's a lot of people talking about gun violence. Gun violence concerns a lot of folks and it should."
Vice President Al Gore, Bush's Democratic opponent, has blasted the Texas governor over the Republican Party's ties to the NRA and for supporting a concealed weapons law in the Lone Star State.