They keep shaking Columbine in front of the public like a witch doctor working the crowd with his ju-ju doll. I get a sense of frustration on their part that the public is getting burned out and doesn't reply with the usual knee-jerk response. What else could explain the drivel below?
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/shooting/0418guns5.shtml
Shots heard round the world
Columbine has galvanized gun-control movement
By Carla Crowder
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
John Head still remembers where the guns were kept in the Nebraska farmhouse of his boyhood. Rifle perched above the front door on a couple of nails, shotgun leaning in a corner.
In 1950, when he was 9, he stomped through fields on his own, a .22 rifle slung over his shoulder.
Forty years later, two boys with guns propelled Head, a Denver attorney, to help launch one of the most aggressive gun-control groups in Colorado.
Conservative business lawyer. Vietnam Purple Heart. Lifelong Republican.
Don't try to tell this unlikely activist that Colorado has done nothing to address gun violence in the year following the deadliest school shooting in American history.
"I don't know how to fix the culture," said Head, a barrel-chested man with leathery skin and a prominent jaw. "I know how to write a law."
The killings at Columbine focused national attention on Colorado and gun control issues.
Yet the state legislature has rejected bills aimed at keeping guns away from kids and criminals.
Twice during his visit last week to Denver, President Clinton chided state's lawmakers for their mild response to guns after Columbine.
However, the tragedy's influence on the gun control debate has echoed far beyond Colorado's gold Capitol dome.
"I think that the momentum had started to build. But I think that Columbine was the defining event that changed the level of intensity once and for all," said Joe Sudbay, political director for Handgun Control Inc., a Washington D.C. gun-control lobby.
"It's just an amazingly different world than it was last year," he said. "You've got Colorado, Utah and Oregon funding referendums. You've got Republican governors endorsed by the NRA in Ohio and New York pushing gun control. You've the Pennsylvania Legislature passing child safety locks."
And then there are Coloradans like John Head and his friend Arnie Grossman, who had a similar epiphany after his 7-year-old granddaughter said she didn't want to go to school "because bad boys might do something to me."
Together they founded SAFE Colorado, the group behind Colorado's ballot initiative to require background checks for all gun show sales.
Grossman also shot rifles as a youth. "I had NRA patches and badges," he said.
It has been a unique year for gun control, as traditional gun foes are joined by surprising voices: Republican governors. Midwesterners who grew up around guns. Firearms owners seeking to distance themselves from gun-rights extremists.
Indeed, the National Rifle Association has asked members for "emergency media" funds to run more election year ads.
"These are not just the usual year-in, year-out skirmishes that we have fought with the media and the gun-ban lobby for the past decade," NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre said, in a letter mailed the week prior to the Columbine anniversary.
Perhaps the most profound statement from Colorado lawmakers was not what they passed, but what they backed away from.
Concealed carry bills, a ban on local control limits on firearms and a bill banning cities from suing gun makers were all on the fast track last session. All were withdrawn within days of the killings.
Republican Gov. Bill Owens, once considered an ally by the anti-gun control groups and a sure signature on a concealed-weapons law, is now demonized by them.
"I too have been impacted by Columbine," the governor said in a recent interview.
Before, he admits, he was no expert on gun laws. Close study has brought him to new conclusions: tighter laws are needed — even if they would not have prevented Columbine.
"I don't think we probably would have known and recognized those areas where the law needs to be strengthened without Columbine," Owens said.
Owens' five-point gun package fared poorly this session. Bills requiring background checks for gun-show private sales, safe storage of firearms and minimum handgun purchase age of 21 all failed.
But SAFE Colorado has taken over where the legislature left off, with its ballot initiative.
Oregon and Utah — other Western states with gun-friendly legislatures like Colorado's — are also organizing gun-control ballot measures.
Oregon's addresses the gun-show loophole; Utah's would ban concealed weapons in schools and churches.
Even though Oregon suffered a school shooting tragedy of its own, Columbine was a "watershed" there, said a state senator who campaigned on gun control in 1996.
"As tragic as the other shootings were, I believe it was Columbine that really brought people up short and created an urgency on this issue that we haven't seen before," said Oregon State Sen. Ginny Burdick, a Democrat from Portland. She sponsored a gun-show background check bill there that failed by one vote.
As emotionally wrenching as Columbine and the other school shootings have been, fundamental change in public policy doesn't happen quickly.
"I hope and pray and pray it's not going to take this country as long to come to its senses on guns...as on giving people of all color and gender the right to vote," said SAFE's Grossman.
Last month, Clinton urged Congress to end its gun-control stalemate by April 20. Not likely.
As the tiresome political rhetoric continues in the U.S. Capitol and in various statehouses, the real activity may be among those folks outside who are taking up the issue.
Spring Nelson graduated from Columbine in 1992. She was working as a nursing assistant at Swedish Medical Center last April, and one of her patients was a Columbine student wounded during the rampage.
Nelson's patient survived. But witnessing her struggle made Nelson incredibly sad.
"It hit so close to home," she said.
Now, like thousands of Colorado parents, Nelson has to brace herself each morning before sending her son off to school. And he's only six.
"It really opened my eyes to the fact that it can happen anywhere," she said.
Her terror and her patients' courage pushed Nelson to join the Million Mom March. On Mother's Day, she'll travel to Washington to march for tighter gun laws.
"We suffered a very severe tragedy. And we're trying to make some good out of this," she said. "And the only people who have blood on their hands are those who will do nothing."
Contact Carla Crowder at (303) 892-2742 or crowderc@RockyMountainNews.com.
------------------
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/shooting/0418guns5.shtml
Shots heard round the world
Columbine has galvanized gun-control movement
By Carla Crowder
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
John Head still remembers where the guns were kept in the Nebraska farmhouse of his boyhood. Rifle perched above the front door on a couple of nails, shotgun leaning in a corner.
In 1950, when he was 9, he stomped through fields on his own, a .22 rifle slung over his shoulder.
Forty years later, two boys with guns propelled Head, a Denver attorney, to help launch one of the most aggressive gun-control groups in Colorado.
Conservative business lawyer. Vietnam Purple Heart. Lifelong Republican.
Don't try to tell this unlikely activist that Colorado has done nothing to address gun violence in the year following the deadliest school shooting in American history.
"I don't know how to fix the culture," said Head, a barrel-chested man with leathery skin and a prominent jaw. "I know how to write a law."
The killings at Columbine focused national attention on Colorado and gun control issues.
Yet the state legislature has rejected bills aimed at keeping guns away from kids and criminals.
Twice during his visit last week to Denver, President Clinton chided state's lawmakers for their mild response to guns after Columbine.
However, the tragedy's influence on the gun control debate has echoed far beyond Colorado's gold Capitol dome.
"I think that the momentum had started to build. But I think that Columbine was the defining event that changed the level of intensity once and for all," said Joe Sudbay, political director for Handgun Control Inc., a Washington D.C. gun-control lobby.
"It's just an amazingly different world than it was last year," he said. "You've got Colorado, Utah and Oregon funding referendums. You've got Republican governors endorsed by the NRA in Ohio and New York pushing gun control. You've the Pennsylvania Legislature passing child safety locks."
And then there are Coloradans like John Head and his friend Arnie Grossman, who had a similar epiphany after his 7-year-old granddaughter said she didn't want to go to school "because bad boys might do something to me."
Together they founded SAFE Colorado, the group behind Colorado's ballot initiative to require background checks for all gun show sales.
Grossman also shot rifles as a youth. "I had NRA patches and badges," he said.
It has been a unique year for gun control, as traditional gun foes are joined by surprising voices: Republican governors. Midwesterners who grew up around guns. Firearms owners seeking to distance themselves from gun-rights extremists.
Indeed, the National Rifle Association has asked members for "emergency media" funds to run more election year ads.
"These are not just the usual year-in, year-out skirmishes that we have fought with the media and the gun-ban lobby for the past decade," NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre said, in a letter mailed the week prior to the Columbine anniversary.
Perhaps the most profound statement from Colorado lawmakers was not what they passed, but what they backed away from.
Concealed carry bills, a ban on local control limits on firearms and a bill banning cities from suing gun makers were all on the fast track last session. All were withdrawn within days of the killings.
Republican Gov. Bill Owens, once considered an ally by the anti-gun control groups and a sure signature on a concealed-weapons law, is now demonized by them.
"I too have been impacted by Columbine," the governor said in a recent interview.
Before, he admits, he was no expert on gun laws. Close study has brought him to new conclusions: tighter laws are needed — even if they would not have prevented Columbine.
"I don't think we probably would have known and recognized those areas where the law needs to be strengthened without Columbine," Owens said.
Owens' five-point gun package fared poorly this session. Bills requiring background checks for gun-show private sales, safe storage of firearms and minimum handgun purchase age of 21 all failed.
But SAFE Colorado has taken over where the legislature left off, with its ballot initiative.
Oregon and Utah — other Western states with gun-friendly legislatures like Colorado's — are also organizing gun-control ballot measures.
Oregon's addresses the gun-show loophole; Utah's would ban concealed weapons in schools and churches.
Even though Oregon suffered a school shooting tragedy of its own, Columbine was a "watershed" there, said a state senator who campaigned on gun control in 1996.
"As tragic as the other shootings were, I believe it was Columbine that really brought people up short and created an urgency on this issue that we haven't seen before," said Oregon State Sen. Ginny Burdick, a Democrat from Portland. She sponsored a gun-show background check bill there that failed by one vote.
As emotionally wrenching as Columbine and the other school shootings have been, fundamental change in public policy doesn't happen quickly.
"I hope and pray and pray it's not going to take this country as long to come to its senses on guns...as on giving people of all color and gender the right to vote," said SAFE's Grossman.
Last month, Clinton urged Congress to end its gun-control stalemate by April 20. Not likely.
As the tiresome political rhetoric continues in the U.S. Capitol and in various statehouses, the real activity may be among those folks outside who are taking up the issue.
Spring Nelson graduated from Columbine in 1992. She was working as a nursing assistant at Swedish Medical Center last April, and one of her patients was a Columbine student wounded during the rampage.
Nelson's patient survived. But witnessing her struggle made Nelson incredibly sad.
"It hit so close to home," she said.
Now, like thousands of Colorado parents, Nelson has to brace herself each morning before sending her son off to school. And he's only six.
"It really opened my eyes to the fact that it can happen anywhere," she said.
Her terror and her patients' courage pushed Nelson to join the Million Mom March. On Mother's Day, she'll travel to Washington to march for tighter gun laws.
"We suffered a very severe tragedy. And we're trying to make some good out of this," she said. "And the only people who have blood on their hands are those who will do nothing."
Contact Carla Crowder at (303) 892-2742 or crowderc@RockyMountainNews.com.
------------------
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.