Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

And some things really have changed. Just a few years ago, the only time television news cameras would focus on crime victims was when they were screaming for blood. Sunday's rally provided the first large-scale national platform for a new generation of victim-activists: a parade of eloquent and anguished gun-violence survivors who want to direct their grief somewhere besides vengeance.

From our sponsor Tuesday spotlight An archive of greatest hits.

"Mothers, we have shed tears for our children," Patricia Anderson of Albuquerque, N.M., whose son was a victim of gun violence and survived, told the crowd. "Let's make our tears a raging river of votes to get our legislators out of office if they do not want stricter gun controls."

Rosie O'Donnell and Hillary Rodham Clinton were celebrity headliners, but there was more on display at the Million Mom March than just smart showmanship by the rally's supporters in the entertainment industry. The march reflected a fundamental change in the politics of crime. Ever since the early '80s, when shrewd tacticians in the Reagan administration courted the nascent crime-victim advocacy movement, "victim rights" has been synonymous with a politics of punishment: three-strikes laws, executions and mandatory minimum sentences have ruled the day. The NRA understands the power of the approach, has counted on it, and on Sunday used its counter-rally to raise the specter of "predatory criminals."

But on Sunday, a new kind of survivor voice could be heard, a smart and eloquent call that seeks to redefine the gun debate. Credit for inspiring this voice goes to two of the women who led Sunday's rally: Sarah Brady, wife of former Reagan press secretary Jim Brady, and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y. Brady and McCarthy are in some sense archetypes for Sunday's Million Mom marchers. Both were moderate, suburban Republicans transformed by their households' encounters with guns: Sarah Brady by her husband's near-fatal shooting in John Hinckley's assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan; Carolyn McCarthy by the death of her husband and the crippling of her son by Long Island Railroad shooter Colin Ferguson.

For them -- as for many of the speakers on Sunday's platform -- a firsthand encounter with gun violence didn't just lead to grief and rage but became the doorway into broad political engagement.

McCarthy vowed that Sunday's rally "is not where it ends." She told the marchers that after Mother's Day, "You're going to talk to your legislators and you're going to stand up for the rights ... that make this country safer for all of us."

But if McCarthy, Brady and those marchers truly want Sunday to be the kickoff for a Million Mom Movement, several reality checks are in order:

Reality check No. 1: Even as Million Mom March organizers were planning and then celebrating their day in the May sun, legislators in their home states were busy shoving even-minimal gun regulation into the darkest backrooms they could find. As pointed out in a startling report just released by the Open Society Institute's Center on Crime, Communities and Culture, no license or registration is required to own a gun in 35 states; 43 states require no permit for assault weapons; and in 18 states, kids can buy rifles and shotguns before they can drive or vote.

Next page | The NRA is more than Charlton Heston screaming bloody murder