from Rosie posted on AOL:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I am proud to be a gun control advocate. Our mission is NOT to prevent law abiding citizens, parents included, from owning a licensed and
registered gun, a gun with child safety features. We are not trying to take away your gun, or Charlton Heston's gun, or any other
law-abiding citizen's gun. We are trying to make guns safer and to keep them out of the hands of criminals and children. We are trying to
regulate a special interest group that has had undue influence on the House and Senate. Firearms are the only products sold in the US that
are not required to meet Consumer Product Safety Commission standards.
"In 1991, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger referred to the Second Amendment as 'the subject of one of the greatest
pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime...[the NRA]
ha(s) misled the American people and they, I regret to say, they have had far too much influence on the Congress of the United States than
as a citizen I would like to see -- and I am a gun man.' Burger also wrote, 'The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any
argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon...
urely the Second Amendment does
not remotely guarantee every person the constitutional right to have a 'Saturday Night Special' or a machine gun without any regulation
whatever. There is no support in the Constitution for the argument that federal and state governments are powerless to regulate the purchase
of such firearms...'" (http://handguncontrol.org/issue_briefs/2ndamend.html)
I do not own a gun. I never have. I never will. Due to my vocal support of gun control, my family and I have been threatened. Last year,
acting on the advice of a security firm, I chose to have a "bodyguard" for my children. At my request, he is not armed, although his presence
may indicate to some that he is. A local newspaper (Greenwich Times) decided to print a RUMOR that this man was armed, we told them
this was untrue, they printed it anyway, along with the school my son was planning to attend. They omitted the specific name of his school,
but it was more than simple to deduce. This unarmed bodyguard sat outside my son's pre-k classroom yesterday, as he has for the last 6
months. The Greenwich police department approached him, on private property, and demanded to search him and his car, without a search
warrant, looking for a gun. There was no gun. This search was politically motivated and totally unwarranted.
As a result of these recent events, his working without a weapon has become an issue in regard to my children's safety. I have not yet
decided which plan of action to take. I will be meeting with security people in order to find a solution.
This "bodyguard" is not employed by me. He works for a security firm. Warner Bros. hired the firm in order to protect me, their client.
Rosie O'Donnell (05/26/00)[/quote]