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"The laws in the District of Columbia are some of the strongest in the country. But the killings go on. . . . If we think about it, we have in Washington, DC, a Columbine every month. And yet, there is silence. Yet, there is not this sort of groundswell of action. Why?" asked Susie Johnson, director for public policy of the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries. Speaking at an interfaith breakfast briefing on May 15, a day after the Million Mom March in Washington, DC, Johnson urged her audience to focus not just on the instruments of violence but on the circumstances of violence that exist in the everyday life of America's children. "To fail to do so is to ensure that nothing will change, because other means of killing will be found," she said. "People are burdened by the desire to belong, burdened to prove their manhood or womanhood, burdened by the need to respond to an insult, burdened by the lack of a clothing label that says they are important, burdened by poverty that compels them to seek resources from other human beings with whom they interact," Johnson added. Johnson challenged the briefing participants to work not just for national gun legislation but for ending hate crimes, revision of the so-called welfare reform regulation, and allocation of funding to support community development and housing. She asked them to look into the lives of the victims and the perpetrators. "Only then will we be able to have the kind of society where children can lay down their burdens and live the fullness of their humanity," she concluded. As part of its ongoing Children's Campaign, the Women's Division sponsored eight members of United Methodist Women's units from across the country to come to the Million Mom March. These women also participated in the interfaith briefing, before making lobby visits on Capitol Hill. Asked why gun control was an important issue to her, Linda Burton, a YWCA child care director, said: "I'm a mother, a grandmother, and I work with children." Then she added, "I'm from Flint, Michigan, where a six-year old shot another six-year old." On the subject of why the issue was important to United Methodist Women (UMW), she said, "Being a Christian, being a United Methodist woman, I've seen what women can do. I think this is an opportunity for us to make a change, and to affect our legislators in making changes." Paula Cartwright, director of a Shalom Zone in Rhode Island, has worked on gun control for eight years. "When my son was in third grade, a child brought a loaded .357 Magnum to school in his classroom. Thankfully the teacher was able to get it away before anyone was hurt, but long ago I realized what could happen and what danger our children were in." Five years ago, Cartwright helped plan a moms' march in Providence, Rhode Island, with the office of former senator John H. Chafee. Now she plans to remind her representatives and senators that people of faith and United Methodist Women are concerned and watching, and are right behind them when they vote for stricter gun controls. Patricia Boatwright, a postal service employee, feels very fortunate that she has not lost a child to gun violence, but her sons have lost several friends to such tragedy. "So many of our teenagers are being killed and gunned down in the streets, walking to the stores. It has a tremendous effect on us. As I said, I have been very fortunate I have not lost one of my two boys, but that's not to say that it won't happen today, tomorrow, next week, next year." As president of her local UMW unit at Bentleyhill United Methodist Church in Stockbridge, Georgia, Boatwright intends to engage her local unit in a letter-writing campaign to find out how their legislators will vote on this issue, and to inform them of her group's views on gun control. "The way they vote will dictate the way I vote," said Boatwright. At the General Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, May 2 12, a resolution was adopted calling on governments to outlaw "ownership by the general public of handguns, assault weapons, automatic weapon conversion kits, and weapons that cannot be detected by traditionally used metal-detection devices." May 19, 2000 |