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A child shoots a child
It isn't about guns; it's about neglect.
By Beth Broeker
[03/13/00]

My brother's keeper
I have saved him all my life, but now there are too many miles between me and the paraded condoms, the muffled awe.
By Chris Colin
[03/10/00]

"Terminus"
A harrowing poem about rape and murder in the Balkans.
By Nicholas Christopher
[03/09/00]

Witness for the persecution
Croatian novelist and journalist Slavenka Drakulic tells a story of breathtaking brutality. We interview her about her new novel and her experiences.
By Kate Moses
[03/09/00]

Abortions in TV land
Good girls don't get them; bad girls do and pay a price.
By Audrey Fisch
[03/08/00]

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In this country, by contrast, this sensitive and decisive response to tragedy seems to be out of the question. Where is our outrage?

Also Today A child shoots a child It isn't about guns; it's about neglect. By Beth Broeker   When liberals lie about guns Zealots are polarizing the debate over how to stop violent crime -- and whether firearms can help. By Cathy Young

The Million Mom March takes a big-tent approach to generating support for gun legislation: Its organizers believe that women from a broad political spectrum can and do agree that guns ought to be both regulated and rare.

I'm looking forward to meeting people who disagree with me about everything under the sun except, for example, the notion that each gun manufactured in this country ought to be outfitted with one of the 30 existing patented devices designed to help childproof it. Even more, I look forward to the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of mothers (and others) converging on the Capitol. And perhaps most of all, I await with keen anticipation the spin that G. Gordon Liddy and his ilk will employ in order to demonize scores of mothers and their children.

"Jack-booted soccer moms," perhaps?

Yes, there will be celebrities (Rosie O'Donnell has already RSVP'd). And yes, I'm sure a couple of rock stars will drop by to serenade us between the speeches, and yes, we will be joined by those members of Congress whose political convictions match our own.

There will be the mothers and fathers of children whose lives have been devastated by guns. (Some of those mothers and fathers will travel all the way from Dunblane.)

And then there will be the rest of us: those of us who know that our children are just as vulnerable to gun violence as anyone else so long as we continue to allow easy access to handguns.

Naturally, no march on Washington would be complete without its counter-demonstration. The Armed Informed Mothers (that's AIM for short), an offshoot of an organization called Second Amendment Sisters, will be there to let Congress know that they "won't stand for having our right to defend our families ripped away."

According to this group, the Million Moms have all been persuaded that guns fire themselves. AIM has put a new spin on the old adage: "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." Their new version goes like this: "Any inanimate object will just sit there until a person picks it up. What they do with it depends on what kind of respect they've been taught for human life."

To me, respect for human life begins with making it more difficult to obtain an inanimate object that is designed to snuff it out.

So when Mother's Day rolls around May 14, I'm getting on the bus. Tough as it might sound to leave town on the only day of the year my children are obligated by law to be nice to me, I find it more important to spend the day making things a little better -- a little safer -- for them.

Brilliant.
salon.com | March 13, 2000

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