Mothers March Against Guns

Invoking the moral authority of motherhood to protest gun violence, hundreds of thousands of mothers and family members amassed Sunday for the Million Mom March in Washington and 70 other cities in the largest gun control rally in U.S. history.

Some came with children in strollers. Some came with only a picture of a loved one lost to gunfire. They included grandmothers, mothers-to-be and supportive husbands.

With so many kids in the crowd, a carnival atmosphere prevailed during much of the rally here. In one tent, kids put crayon to butcher paper to express their opinions. Samples of their messages: “Melt the guns,” “Be mad about guns” and “Peace rules, violence drools!”

Rallies were held from Atlanta to Los Angeles. But the biggest was in the nation’s capital, where organizers estimated the crowd at more than 500,000 on the balmy, summery day. TV talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell, who was emcee of the rally, put the number at 750,000.

Federal authorities no longer give crowd estimates. The demonstrators filled several blocks on the National Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

“Politicians, take heed. We are watching you. The hands that rock the cradles rule the world,” said Dawn Anna, mother of Lauren Townsend, a student killed at Columbine High School in Colorado last year.

A few blocks away, a much smaller gun-rights demonstration was staged by the Second Amendment Sisters, drawing about 1,000 supporters carrying signs reading, “Registration, Then Confiscation” and “Save Kids, Arm Moms.”

The Million Mom March was inspired by last year’s shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, and about 7,000 women, children and family members took part in two companion marches against guns Sunday in Los Angeles, where the mood ranged from tearful to angry to exuberant.

“This is what’s left of my family,” said Charlotte Jordan, her arms around two sons in front of a downtown Los Angeles crowd of about 5,000. “We’ve got to stick together,” said Jordan, who lost a son, a daughter and a nephew to fatal gunshots. “Don’t just go home today and forget about this in the car. Connect yourself with an organization. . . . Help make our streets safe.”

Charon Sandoval of Altadena lost her son Ochari in a drive-by shooting in Atlanta in 1992. She said she felt positive about the march, adding: “I haven’t been called a mom in eight years.”

At the Westwood rally’s end, she embraced Juli Cuccia, of Dana Point, who lost her 17-year-old son, Carlo, last year in a Redlands shooting.

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” said Cuccia, on her first Mother’s Day without Carlo. “I hope today makes a difference, that people will finally listen.”

The Los Angeles rallies originally were planned as one massive demonstration that would unify women across the five sprawling counties of Southern California, but disagreements about where to hold the protest resulted in two marches, one on the Westside and one downtown, close to minority neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.

A gun-rights demonstration attracted about 650 counter-marchers, who gathered opposite an anti-gun rally near the Federal Building in Westwood. Snapping her fingers, Anna Zetchus-Raetz said: “If I could go like this and have no guns on the planet, I’d be the happiest person. But the world is more complicated than that. The criminals are going to get guns. We need them too.”

In Chicago, more than 4,000 gun control advocates rallied. In Denver, several thousand more advocates mobilized, and about 200 gun-rights demonstrators chanted, “We will not disarm.” And in Portland, Ore., more than 500 people turned out in support of stronger gun laws.

The moms gathered on Mother’s Day to send a message to Congress: Enact stronger gun laws, most notably licensing of handgun owners and registration of their weapons, or face their wrath on election day.

Indeed, they left the rally promising to be a potent new voice in the gun control debate and to play a crucial role in the upcoming presidential and congressional races.

The Republican-controlled Congress attempted to act on a modest gun control measure after two teenage gunmen killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves at Columbine in Littleton, Colo., last year. But the legislation, which would expand background checks at gun shows and require trigger locks on guns, has been blocked amid opposition from the National Rifle Assn.

In Washington, the march attracted celebrities and politicians, but the most moving stories came from mothers who had lost children to gunfire. They included several from Dunblane, Scotland, where a gunman killed 16 kindergartners in 1996, leading to a successful movement in Britain to enact a ban on most handguns.

Clutching a picture of her dead son, Christopher Robin Hotchkiss, Radna Stern, 46, came from Mill Valley, Calif., to march at the mall. Her son, shot four years ago, would have turned 26 today. “He wouldn’t be dead today if a gun wasn’t involved,” she said. Her 27-year-old daughter was marching in Oakland.

Adeline Rabutino, 53, of Philadelphia said her youngest son, Billy Impagliazzo, was about to join the Navy when his life was cut short at 19.

“It’s just devastating. I can’t do anything for my son, but hopefully we can do something for someone else, to prevent it from happening to another family,” she said.

Rita Simpson, 36, a university researcher from Ann Arbor, Mich., hung a sign on the back of her shirt with safety pins to advertise that her Uncle Bob was gunned down in 1981. Robert Myers, Simpson said, was a father of six and a small-business man in Cleveland. His assailant, probably a mugger, was never caught.

“I’ll knock on doors,” she said. “To me this is one of the most important issues.”

Deanna Siliciano, an anesthesiologist, left her two children at home in St. Paul, Minn., to join the march with her mother from New Jersey and friends from Maryland. She said she has seen too many gunshot victims in hospital operating rooms.

“I’ve never gone and rallied for anything before, but it’s time,” she said. “It’s hard to leave your kids on Mother’s Day, but this is more important.”

There were plenty of stroller-pushing dads in the crowd. Joel Smetanka, 30, of Germantown, Md., came with his wife, Lori, and their two sons. Smetanka grew up in western Pennsylvania, a state where hunting is popular and gun control is controversial.

“There’s plenty of men that feel the same way I do,” Smetanka said. “But they don’t feel it’s the best issue to speak out on.” Asked why he decided to do so, Smetanka said: “To tell you the truth, my wife really got involved. She wanted this to be how we spent Mother’s Day. I’m here to support her.”

Echoing that sentiment, one man held a sign that declared, “Dads for Moms. Our Wives Save Kids’ Lives!”

The rally was cross-generational. Cheryl Jorgensen-Earp, 47, of Salem, Va., brought her son, her husband and her mother, Neva Earp--a neophyte marcher at age 80.

Asked what drew her to the gun issue, the grandmother said: “You’re afraid to go anywhere. You don’t know in a restaurant or a church even if people will have a gun.”

“My son’s starting school this year,” said Elizabeth Cregan, 40, of St. Paul, Minn., “and the thought of him going out into the world with this kind of violence scares me a lot.” Cregan toted a sign with a picture of her mother, Phyllis, whom she saw slain by gunfire in Chicago in 1976.

She said the impasse in Washington over gun control is frustrating. But she warned: “We vote. And a lot of people here are going to vote on this issue. This is an election year, and they would be fools to ignore this.”

Teresa Shattuck, of Greenbelt, Md., was among a group of moms seated at a bank of computers under a tent signing an electronic petition to Congress in support of gun control. Shattuck said she is worried because her 4-year-old son Zachary loves toy guns. “He’s already picked up the message ‘guns are cool,’ ” she said, adding, “I want him to know that we hate them.”

But gun control advocates still have a lot of work to do. Some moms interviewed did not know their Congress members’ names or the lawmaker’s position on gun control.

Although organizers sought to portray the march as a nonpartisan call for stronger gun laws, the rally appeared to have a Democratic tilt, with signs in the crowd promoting Al Gore and attacking George W. Bush’s ties to the NRA.

At a White House send-off, President Clinton told the moms: “Don’t be deterred by the political mountain you have to climb.”

And First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is running for the U.S. Senate in New York, said the mothers have a simple Mother’s Day message: “We don’t want flowers or jewelry, we don’t want a nice card or a fancy meal as much as we want our Congress to do the right thing to protect our children.”

Marcia Kingman, of Bethesda, Md., who gave her age as “50-plus,” said she was marching for the first time since a protest in Berkeley against the Vietnam War.

As someone who grew up in rural Michigan, Kingman said: “I’m not predisposed to be anti-hunting and anti-all guns. I’m just looking for a little rational thought.” Kingman said her family was horrified to hear that she planned to march. “I talked to my mother this morning and she said, ‘That’s a terrible thing to do.’ ”

Across the way at the gun-rights rally, three generations of the same family--Ginger Berglund, 53, her daughter, Bev Wolke, 33, and granddaughters Jade, 5, and Raynee, 3--came from Grand Marais, Minn. “What’s happening in America is that when one person does something wrong, everybody has to pay,” Berglund said.

“That’s not right.” She said that parents need to teach their children about gun safety. Pointing to her 5-year-old granddaughter, she said: “She shot her first partridge last year.”

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Times staff writers Jessica Garrison and Antonio Olivo contributed to this story.