Women Gun Owners Also Plan Rally

Their counterdemonstration in support of gun rights will be smaller than the Million Mom March. But the gun-owning women who make up the Second Amendment Sisters feel just as passionately about their cause.

“The anti-gun factions constantly say that if it saves one life, it’s worth it,” said Debra Collins, who once used a 12-gauge shotgun to defend herself from an attack by her ex-husband at 4 o’clock in the morning. “Well, my firearm saved one life--mine.”

Collins, Colorado coordinator for the pro-gun group, will be in Washington on Sunday, Mother’s Day, to tell her story at the Armed Informed Mothers March. (Despite the name, these women won’t be packing. “And, please, no empty holsters,” says the group’s Web site.)

As many as 5,000 of the pro-gun women--many marching with their children and carrying balloons to represent the “lives saved by personal firearms every year”--will gather a few blocks from where the Million Mom March hopes to draw 150,000 or more to what is expected to be the largest gun control rally in U.S. history. Counterdemonstrations also will take place in Los Angeles; Denver; Tulsa, Okla.; and other cities.

Major Support Tool for Pro-Gun Advocates

The sisters, who say they are working independently of the National Rifle Assn., are nonetheless a crucial tool for those who are fighting new gun controls. Faced with public opinion polls showing majority support for tougher gun laws, especially among women, they defy the stereotype.

“Slavery used to be popular in this country too,” said Kim Watson, who says proudly that her 10-year-old son “has been shooting since he was 4, supervised. He knows all of the safety rules.”

Watson established the Dallas-based Second Amendment Sisters with four other women she met over the Internet. None wanted Congress to believe that the Million Mom March speaks for all women.

“I sure don’t feel the same way these other women do,” said Watson. “A lot of people look at folks on our side and they just have this picture of us sitting behind our door with our firearm, just waiting for somebody to break in so we can blow them away. And that’s absolutely not the case.”

Texas state Rep. Suzanna Gratia Hupp, whose parents were among 23 victims of the 1991 shooting at a Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, is equally passionate.

“I don’t care what the majority thinks. We have this wonderful Bill of Rights, which is there to protect the individual from the majority,” said the Republican lawmaker, who was elected in 1996.

Hupp, who will be the keynote speaker at the pro-gun rally, contends that she might have been able to stop the gunman--who was 15 feet away from her--if she had been allowed to legally carry her .38-caliber revolver into the restaurant. Instead, she left it in her car, 100 yards from where the shooting began.

“I chose to obey a really stupid law,” said Hupp. “I was mad as hell at my legislators. I felt that they had legislated me out of the right to protect myself and my family.”

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the expected Republican presidential nominee, signed a law in 1995 that repealed the 125-year-old ban on carrying concealed guns.

Hupp was at the White House on Friday, among representatives of both sides of the debate, talking with President Clinton on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America.”

Clinton Responds to Horrific Story

After she told her story, Clinton responded: “She may be right. . . . If there had been someone in the restaurant who knew how to use a gun and was lawfully carrying it . . . , maybe they could have stopped this horrible incident.”

However, Clinton said, in most instances “a lot of people have guns who don’t know how to use them. . . . So it’s a question of what makes you safest overall.”

Later, meeting in Ohio with local Million Mom March organizers, Clinton said: “For a very long time now, large majorities of the American people have been for common-sense prevention legislation that has nothing to do with infringing on the right to keep arms . . . but has everything to do with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and children.”

The pro-gun women argue otherwise.

Speaking at a pro-gun rally in Denver will be Brenda Flowers, a Colorado Springs mother whose 18-year-old daughter and only child, Kimberly, committed suicide with a gun in 1992.

Yet, Flowers today is licensed to carry a concealed gun. “I think about the people whose lives have been saved by the mere brandishing of a firearm . . . and those lives are just as precious as my Kimberly’s. We need to address the anger and the hostility of our society.”

The dueling marches are occurring as a gun-control measure, passed by the Senate after the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado a year ago, has been blocked by Republicans and a few Democrats in the House. That measure would expand background checks of buyers at gun shows, require trigger locks on handguns, ban the import of high-capacity ammunition clips and bar violent youth offenders from owning guns as adults.

Hyde Offers a Compromise

Late Friday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) offered Democrats a compromise proposal in an effort to end the nine-month deadlock over gun control legislation. A Democratic aide said Hyde appeared to be making “some significant concessions.” But the aide said he needed time to study “whether this is for real or a stunt” on the eve of the Million Mom March.

Organizers of the Million Mom March are pushing for the licensing of handgun owners and registration of their weapons.

Such a measure, say supporters, will reduce accidental gun deaths because it will require gun owners to undergo a safety class. It also will make it harder for criminals to buy guns, they say, and help police trace guns used in crimes.

The pro-gun women contend that such restrictions will lead to confiscation of guns.

“Driving a car is a privilege. You have to earn that,” said Maria Heil, a gun-owning Pennsylvania mother of four who is coming to the Washington rally of women in support of guns. “Defending yourself and your family is a right. You should never have to prove that to anybody.”

The sisters advocate better enforcement of existing gun laws, safety education and more responsible parenting.

“Basic firearm legislation is something that is sadly lacking in this country because of the demonization of the gun,” said Watson. “Rather than deal with it as a tool that can be potentially dangerous to somebody . . . , we want to lock it away and never talk about it. And that’s what gets kids curious about it.”

While the NRA has had little to say about the Million Mom March, the focus on women has inspired it to turn to women to make its case.

In a TV ad that began airing this week, actress and NRA board member Susan Howard (Donna Krebbs from the TV series “Dallas”) asks: “Can we talk, woman to woman?”

“We all want safe kids,” she says, pointing out that “a million NRA moms” have offered $1 million to fund firearm safety classes in schools.

Second Amendment Sisters’ Web site is https://www.sas-aim.org. The Million Mom March site is at https://www.millionmommarch.com