http://blogs.timesunion.com/underfire/?p=61
June 24, 2007 at 10:08 am by Robyn Ringler
June 24, 2007 at 10:08 am by Robyn Ringler
Dear Readers,
At least one of you is an irresponsible, harrassing criminal who shouldn’t own a gun. For the second time since I started advocating for sensible gun legislation, I’ve received a frightening threat and called police.
The following is an essay I wrote about a threat I received shortly after 9/11. It was published by the Albany Times Union on September 6, 2002.
The third of October, it was just 22 days after September 11, 2001. Reaching into the mailbox, I pulled out the usual: bills, junk mail, and magazines, along with one personal letter, its return address simply: Rosie O’Donnell. In the kitchen, I slit the envelope, pulling out a piece of torn paper. Cold blue capital letters jolted me:
YOU FILTHY DIRTY BITCH! COMMUNIST JEW! YOU’LL
NEVER TAKE OUR GUNS AND WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE
I ran from room to room, locking windows and doors. Scanning the yards, I saw no one, but imagined men with guns lurking in hidden places.
I wondered who could have done this. More to the point, who could have misinterpreted me so completely? True, I was a gun control activist, but I also lived on thirty acres of rural property among friends and neighbors for whom hunting was a way of life. I took pride in myself as a voice of reason—someone who understood the gun tradition yet knew the value of gun control laws in saving lives.
As a member of a NYS gun control group and founder of its upstate chapter, I fought for laws requiring safe storage, background checks, licensing and registration—not banning guns. But that didn’t matter. Whoever sent the letter wasn’t interested in my position. He just wanted to silence me.
Though the police reassured us this was the typical work of a bully who probably would take no further action, my husband and I were shaken and wondered if I should quit my gun control work. After a few phone calls, we discovered that, although my organization had never received a threat, many other gun control groups often had. Most workers courageously stayed on.
I, too, hoped to find reasons to stay. I had a lot to say because gun violence had affected me. In 1981, I was assigned to care for President Ronald Reagan at the George Washington University Hospital following an assassination attempt.
When I first saw President Reagan, he looked startlingly different from the image of the rugged cowboy I had seen on TV. Instead of a plaid shirt and Stetson hat, he was swaddled in a hospital gown, his face covered by an oxygen mask. He lay on a stretcher pushed by nurses and Secret Service agents. His anguished wife was huddled at the top of the stretcher, cradling his head in her arms.
The first several nights, the disoriented president had a raging fever and trouble breathing. We mobilized into action—monitoring vital signs, chest tube drainage, and blood tests, administering chest physical therapy and intravenous antibiotics. But we knew by his prostrate body, colorless face, the perspiration trickling into his dark hair and the sound of his labored breathing, there was a real possibility the president might die.
I wondered how this could have happened—how did the shooter get a weapon with his history of mental illness?
Later, I often saw James Brady (President Reagan’s press secretary, gravely injured in the same shooting) wheeled into physical therapy by his wife, Sarah, the bulk of his body slumped to one side, his wide eyes seeming to be the only part of him left living.
Nineteen years later, in May 2000, I returned to Washington, D.C. to attend the Million Mom March. I cried as mothers and wives told stories of senseless shootings: a son killed in a fight over his jacket, a daughter shot in the library at school, a first grader shot in her classroom by a six-year-old.
Determined to do more, I joined the gun control group. Everyday for three weeks, we demonstrated at the NYS Capitol. Elation consumed me when a landmark package of gun control laws was passed. I worked harder—giving speeches, passing out literature, and lobbying lawmakers, at the same time, forming close friendships.
A year and a half later, I stood in my kitchen, looking at the letter. I was convinced that whoever sent it heard a speech two days earlier in which I argued that families should think carefully before bringing a gun into the home. A three-year-old child in Virginia had killed himself with a loaded gun specifically bought to protect the family from terrorists.
On the news that night, a local TV station played snippets of my speech juxtaposed against the commentary of patrons from the Pistol Parlor. The broadcast was like a boxing match with words: first me, then them, then me, then them. I had been televised before, but never like this. It seemed likely that the media report—and, perhaps, the fear generated by September 11th—prompted the threat.
Three days after I received the letter, a member of my group called with news that a gun control activist had been murdered. Tom Wales, the president of Washington Ceasefire in Seattle was deliberately shot and killed in his home. No one knew whether the shooting was related to his outspoken views on gun control.
I informed the FBI and state police of the death in Seattle. The officers sounded grim and, this time, offered no reassurance. An FBI agent questioned whether killing gun control advocates might become the new equivalent of bombing abortion clinics. I welcomed the state police’s decision to begin night patrols of my home.
The murder gave my fear a link with reality. With no way to evaluate the seriousness of the threat against me (the police investigation turned up no fingerprints or other evidence), I made the difficult decision to quit my job.
I wondered how other activists could be so courageous as to simply walk into their workplaces everyday or even open the mail. Awed by their bravery, I felt they should be honored because, unlike me, they refused to quit. Seventeen cold blue words typed across a ripped page, sent by a person who hoped he would achieve this exact result, stopped me. And yet I have not been completely silenced. I have told you what happened.
