Mom Turns Tragedy Into Crusade Against Violence

Glenda Lee-Barnard learned that her son had been shot when she arrived home one afternoon from a walk. The news came as a message on her answering machine. It didn’t say whether the 12-year-old was alive or dead.

In that instant five years ago, she couldn’t believe what was happening. No one in her family had ever been touched by violence of any kind. And she had intended to keep it that way by raising her two children in Thousand Oaks, one of America’s safest cities.

But that notion was shattered in a flash of gunfire in September 1990 as David Lee lay fighting for his life, accidentally shot by his stepbrother at his father’s Claremont home.

The bullet didn’t kill the youngster, but it paralyzed him from the mid-chest down.

“It’s just devastating what a bullet can do to a kid and to a family,” said Lee-Barnard, 49. “If there was ever a moment in time for my life to change, it was that moment.”

One bullet. One accidental shooting. So many lives changed forever.

While the injury put her son, who is now 18, in a wheelchair probably for the rest of his life, it also launched the Thousand Oaks mother of two on a tireless crusade against gun violence.

She has successfully lobbied for two new state laws, one requiring safety training for gun buyers and the other holding adults responsible when children are injured by guns left within easy reach.

She has become an outspoken critic of the cheap, easily produced handguns known as Saturday night specials, working toward a ban on the sale and manufacture of those weapons.

And to ensure that her message does not get lost or watered down, she has campaigned for and gone to work with legislators who promised to champion that issue all the way to the White House.

“All I do and the reason I live is to work for the reduction of gun violence,” said Lee-Barnard, who was the Ventura County manager of Democrat Brad Sherman’s successful congressional campaign, and who will serve as his local field representative when he assumes office in January.

“When something like that happens to your son, it gives you the strength to move mountains,” she added. “Bullets don’t stop. They keep going. One is still going in my life.”

Replay of 911 Tape

The voice on the scratchy 911 tape is choked with panic.

With a police dispatcher trying to make sense of what’s happening, David’s 15-year-old stepbrother screams for an ambulance. The teenager tells the dispatcher he just shot his little brother. David can be heard in the background crying for his mother.

“That one hurts every time,” said Lee-Barnard, her eyes filling with tears as she listened recently to a recording of the emergency call made moments after her son was shot.

She has heard the 911 call over and over again. She has played it for audiences to win support for her drive to curb gun violence. And she has played it for youngsters to drive home the message that guns are serious business.

She knows every word by heart, but every time she hears the tape it hurts just as much as the first time.

The shooting happened the day before the start of the school year. David’s parents had long been divorced, and the youngster was visiting his father. The boys had been left alone, a fact that troubled Lee-Barnard to the point that she called several times that morning to check on them.

But that afternoon they came across a .38-caliber handgun that had been purchased for home protection. The gun accidentally went off, and a single bullet traveled through David’s right biceps, pierced his chest under the armpit and finally stopped just under the skin on his back.

The tape of the 911 call chronicles the panic that ensued. David’s stepbrother tried to stop the bleeding. And in his hysteria, in between cursing and apologizing for what he did, the teenager cries out that he never should have touched the gun.

The call ends with David dragging himself to the phone and telling the dispatcher that he can’t move his legs.

“And he never walked again,” Lee-Barnard said, looking down at her fingernails and trying not to cry.

The adjustment has not been easy. Lee-Barnard said her second marriage snapped under the strain of coping with the incident. And David, who spent one year in the hospital and four more adjusting to life without use of his legs, recently set out on his own.

He is living with his girlfriend’s family in Palo Alto, working toward a high school diploma and a sense of independence.

“Taking the bullet was the easiest thing about the whole ordeal compared to everything else,” David said. “I just really felt it was time to get out and do things for myself. Things just weren’t working out down there; there were too many bad memories. I needed to get out on my own and make a fresh start.”

For mother and son, a fresh start is hard to come by. There is still much to come to terms with. As Lee-Barnard said, the bullet is still traveling.

“This is what we’ve gone through for five years,” she said. “You can’t give my son his childhood back, and you can’t give me a normal family back. Nothing can ever replace what has been taken away. I tell you, there’s a lot of grieving to be done and it never stops. But in between, I get things done.”

Gun Legislation

Yes she does. Immediately in front of her is legislation at the state and federal levels that would regulate how handguns are made. Those laws, if enacted, would effectively halt production of Saturday night specials.

In fact, Lee-Barnard said that is the reason she worked so hard to elect Sherman.

To that end, she tapped her friendship with Sarah Brady, chairwoman of Washington-based Handgun Control Inc. Brady’s husband, former White House press secretary James Brady, was paralyzed in 1981 by a bullet meant for President Ronald Reagan.

Sherman won the Bradys’ endorsement on his way to winning the 24th congressional seat earlier this month in a district that stretches from Thousand Oaks to Van Nuys and Malibu.

Now, along with Sen. Barbara Boxer, Sherman has promised to push legislation next year in Congress that would regulate the manufacture of handguns.

“I would say Glenda is one of the most persistent and dogged advocates among all of those who live in the district,” Sherman said. “But she would not be the only person upset if I ran on gun control and then ran away from gun control.

“I have no intention of doing that. It’s not just a commitment to one constituent, it’s a commitment to all those who believe in reasonable efforts to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.”

Like Sherman, Lee-Barnard said she supports the right to own firearms, including most handguns. But she said she will continue to work to outlaw Saturday night specials, which are cheap, easily concealed and used in a significant number of crimes committed by juveniles.

Although it was not a Saturday night special that injured her son, she believes that banning those weapons could save lives and spare other families the anguish that hers has experienced.

In addition, she continues to preach her anti-gun violence message in schools in Ventura County and throughout the inner city, where she says handguns are taking their greatest toll.

“In every state there’s a mother like me who will take it further and who will take issue every time a bullet goes out of a gun and into a child,” she said.

“We have an epidemic of violence in the United States. It’s heartbreaking and I’m sorry, but it’s here,” she added. “But I’m working for change. I’ve learned to channel my anger, my fear and my grief and I have yet to lose. I’ve lost enough; I don’t need to lose anymore.”