(Via Milinet)

That Million Mom March was really about

The Hill

May 17, 2000

By David Keene



Now that the million moms, give or take a few hundred thousand,
have gone

home, it's time to look at just what last weekend was all about.


At one level, what we saw was what we got. They rallied to show
their

distaste for societal violence and disintegration by demanding
that

Congress do something about gun violence. People who want to
make a

difference will invariably respond to those who offer what they
perceive to

be solutions to problems they want solved.


The important word here is "perceive." Perception will trump
reality almost

every time. The fact that violent crime in this country is
falling for

reasons unrelated to banning, or severely restricting, private
firearms

ownership doesn't matter to those who are scared. The fact that
an American

child is far more likely to be killed on a bicycle than in a gun
accident

is less relevant than the perception that kids are dying in
record numbers

simply because guns exist.


In the atmosphere in which the march took place, it matters
little that

fewer people died in this country last year in gun-related
accidents than

in any year since 1913, when our population was much smaller. As
little as

a recent government study that found young people who grow up in
homes with

legal firearms are less likely to illegally use a gun than those
never

exposed to guns.

The perception borne of the tragedies in Littleton, Colo., and
elsewhere

that our public schools are unsafe because of gun-toting
lunatics in the

halls is far more potent than the fact that the single safest
place for a

child at any time is in an American school, or the fact that
school

violence has been decreasing.


At another more fundamental level, however, the Million Mom
March had less

to do with any real concern about guns than about the
presidential and

congressional elections. The sincerity in the faces of many of
those

recruited for the march should not obscure the motivation and
backgrounds

of those who put it together so that they could exploit that
sincerity for

their own purposes


The organizers of the march dismissed any attempt to educate
young people

on gun safety as ludicrous, and laughed at those who suggest
that President

Clinton might at least be asked why he hasn't supported those in
his own

administration who have tried to prosecute criminals who violate
existing

federal gun laws.


Take the recent case of one-time militant H. Rap Brown who has
given up the

revolutionary rhetorical flourishes that made him a campus hero
in the

'60s, but remains a thug and possibly a murderer. He already had
a couple

of felony convictions last year when Georgia authorities
identified him as

the prime suspect in a robbery and murder. When they caught him
he was

carrying an illegal gun. They had him dead-to-rights on the
murder and

robbery charges, but before they could get him to trial, the
main witness

in the case conveniently "vanished."


As a result, the local authorities couldn't hold Brown on those
charges,

but they believed him dangerous and urged the federal prosecutor
to put him

away for violating federal gun laws. Their argument was simple
enough:

Brown is dangerous and you have the ability to take him off the
streets.


The prosecutor, however, checked with Washington and was told
not to

prosecute. He didn't. Brown walked and a couple of months ago
killed a

deputy sheriff, whose widow, one suspects, was not among those
Bill Clinton

invited to the White House last week.


A leading Democratic pollster suggested in a briefing before
last weekend's

march why it was so important. Democrats have benefited from the
so-called

gender gap for some years, but are finding that it may no longer
exist.

Indeed, when one looks at the women's vote right now, it is
clear that Al

Gore and his friends are losing groups they need to win in the
fall.


Remember the soccer moms. Like most other moms, they seem ready
to vote for

George W. Bush this fall. In fact, one recent poll gives Bush a
20-point

lead among married women and a 44-point lead among women who
stay home

rather than go out to work. These groups include soccer moms and
the

targets of the Million Mom March.


The pollster said the march was vitally important to Democrats
looking for

a wedge issue to pry these women away from Republicans. Whether
it works or

not remains to be seen, but is clear the weekend wasn't only
about guns.

It was about politics, stupid.



David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union and a

Washington-based government affairs consultant.


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Two meter bomb, Dick. Good on ya!

Semper fi
George