Leave The Guns Behind
Sunday , April 30, 2000 ; B08
Last Monday, I stood at the bedside of a plump, baby-faced 11-year-old boy who was trying to live, his head bandaged against a terrible gun wound. Lying there in silence, he
spoke for almost 700 District children killed by guns in the 1990s.
Here, as in most big cities, guns have brought down kids in ones and twos, not seven children at the zoo, or 14 in a school like the Columbine High School massacre. Yet, a
big-city version of that suburban tragedy has followed our children to the National Zoo, established by Congress for kids.
His family calls him "Pappy" because, as a baby, he resembled a papoose. In their loving laughing descriptions, Pappy emerges as a big "baby" who loves to play, delights in
his mom and loves his dad, his church, his games and childhood.
Pappy's mother and older sister stood silently weeping. I will never forget this mother's quiet whispers to her boy, the minister's perfect, prayerful words, Pappy's silky smooth
brown skin or the harsh clinical lights that reminded me of where I was.
As Pappy fights for his life, I have had it with the pathetic either-or debate about guns vs. some other causes of our chronic violence. When Congress returns, it will start again.
In a supporting role, the media, as much to entertain as to enlighten, will feature yesterday's arguments with today's messengers. We all know our lines. Them: The District and
other cities have gun bans, but lots of gun violence. Us: Pass national gun safety legislation to stop gun running into our gun-free zones. Pappy can't hear it. Nor can the 80,000
children guns have claimed in this country since 1979.
The killing of children by guns--homicides, suicides and accidents--now includes kid killers. It certainly didn't begin with children, or last Monday or the last century. We shot
our way into this country. We forcibly kept slaves. The violence passed on, imbedded itself in the national character and assumed new forms to fit each period and its excesses:
lynchings in the '20s or organized crime killings in the '30s. Today, it has come down to guns and children.
The violence is in our guns, and it is deep within us. We obsess on violence in our movies, videos, television, cable and literature. We play with violence--from men and football,
to boys and computer games. We live with domestic violence. This dangerous mixture is all the more lethal because the guns and our long love affair with violence today meet
strained or broken families or no real families at all.
Are we finally ready to put it all on the table and sort it out? Breaking off our centuries-old romance with violence will be wrenching. Trying to pull violence out by the roots will
mean coaxing and demanding much more from Hollywood and the networks and particularly from parents and communities.
But if we call a truce, put everything on the table and walk in with our hands up, can we leave the guns out of this picture? I'm willing to begin by conceding that the modest gun
safety bill stuck in Congress probably would not have protected Pappy. I know the bill is not the answer because I don't know all the answers. All the one-shot answers--the
family, the sports, the culture, more enforcement, even guns--need to go.
Precisely because the complexity of the problem, let alone the solutions, is so vexing, we must begin somewhere. Why not begin with one child, shot perhaps by another,
somewhere in America? Why not begin with Pappy here in Washington, where Congress will return this week? It's as good a place as any to start because a bill is within reach.
We have agreement on gun safety locks. Thanks to technology, we can check the overwhelming majority of gun buyers at gun shows. Who would want the 10 percent we most
need to check to slip through because we have left the hole for them to crawl through?
The moms want us to start with guns. A formidable grass-roots network that originates in the suburbs is preparing to march on Washington on Mother's Day. Even before the
shooting, Pappy's mom had intended to be there. The bill the mothers want is a small piece of our most confounding national puzzle, but a national bill can be the signal of a
new national determination that this time guns are on a long, crowded, overdue to-do list.
--Eleanor Holmes Norton
a Democrat, is the District's delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.
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