SHOT HEARD ’ROUND THE BURBS
Schools such as Sandy Hook ... don’t guarantee freedom from gun violence anymore.
Hundreds of inner-city Boston mothers and fathers have already lost children to gun violence. So it was striking yesterday that the modest but enthusiastic State House crowd rallying for tighter gun laws was mostly suburban, nearly all white and nearly all untouched by gun mayhem.
But Newtown changed everything, said many who gathered in the cold with the Boston Chapter of One Million Moms for Gun Control, the post-Newtown group created online that held 11 other protests nationwide yesterday.
The new reality: Picture postcard schools such as Sandy Hook in Norman Rockwell-esque enclaves like Newtown don’t guarantee freedom from gun violence anymore. Now the horrible fear of someone shooting your child is not just the nightmare of a mother such as Ruth Rollins of Roxbury, who showed up yesterday for her son Daniel Hairston, shot in the head and killed 6 years ago today. Now it’s a fear shared by Brookline mothers Dawn Tringas and Monique Hamze and Molly Malloy of Jamaica Plain, who helped organize yesterday’s rally and looked out from the podium at signs that read, “We’ve Had Enough.”
Now Connor Kennedy, 9, of Watertown shows up with his mom because, as he put it, “Guns aren’t good for shooting each other.”
Now John McSheffrey of Cohasset calls it his “moral obligation to be here.” So he came with his wife, Dianna, daughter Taylor, almost 10, and son Andrew, 12, though Andrew was hobbling on crutches with a broken leg. “We have young kids,” said McSheffrey. “And Markey’s got my vote because he’s here, too,” he said of U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat who’s just announced he’s running for U.S. Senate.
The NRA’s stranglehold on America is over, Markey told the rally. “This is the moment. This is the beginning of a revolution that is going to change America.” Well, we’ll see. This is Boston, where Mayor Tom Menino has teamed with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to battle illegal guns; where, as the Herald reported yesterday, police are “aggressive” in getting guns off the street; where almost nobody — politician or regular Joe — offers up the Second Amendment as justification for assault weapons with enough capacity to mow down dozens in seconds.
Drive an hour north to New Hampshire. You hear seemingly thoughtful people justify such weaponry just so sport shooters can have more fun at the local gun range. Turn on your TV. Hear the NRA’s crazed Wayne LaPierre suggest we start arming first-grade teachers. Hear people, who appear to have a brain, agree with him.
Ruth Rollins, who knows what gun violence means, fought back tears yesterday as an emergency worker from Boston Medical Center talked about trying to save young men — for it is mostly young men — bleeding to death in front of him. “I wonder,” Rollins said, “did he work on my son?” But she was heartened, not disappointed, that mothers and fathers came yesterday, even if there were only about 200, even if they came from far away. “At the end of the day,” Rollins said, “we’re all together. I believe God uses us to do this work.”