Harry Tuttle
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Gun foes picket NRA convention
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04109/302610.stm
Convention delegates calmly dismiss objections by small, vocal group
Sunday, April 18, 2004
By Bill Schackner and Amy McConnell, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tom Mauser, whose son was killed in the Columbine High School massacre, donned the tennis shoes that Daniel wore as he was shot and marched them yesterday into the heart of the nation's gun lobby.
After a news conference Downtown in which he and other speakers decried gun violence and urged extension of the federal ban on assault weapons, Mauser led several other activists on a four-block walk to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
There, Mauser entered but was turned away from the National Rifle Association's annual convention.
Along with the gray and blue tennis shoes returned to him by Colorado authorities a few weeks back, Mauser, 52, a Finleyville native, carried a placard with his 15-year-old son's picture and a letter Mauser sent to Charlton Heston and the NRA a few weeks after his son's 1999 death. The letter, which Mauser said was never answered, urged among other things that the NRA "quit protecting the dark side of the gun trade."
"Yes, I'm a bit angry, but who wouldn't be," the letter stated. "Have you ever lost a child, Mr. Heston?"
On the sidewalk approaching the hall, Mauser encountered skeptical looks and sarcasm from some convention-goers who say those protesting assault weapons unfairly link the NRA to violence. Shortly after entering the convention hall, security personnel told Mauser he lacked a protest permit. They quickly ushered him back outside.
LaRae Lorsung, an NRA member from Callaway, Minn., looked annoyed as Mauser and the other marchers passed her with half a dozen TV cameras surrounding them.
"I think they ought to go home," she said of the protesters. "I feel bad for those people, but it isn't the guns or the gun makers. It's the criminals."
"Cars kill people. They're not trying to ban cars," she said. "Knives kill people. They're not trying to ban knives."
The noon news conference was sponsored by a coalition of groups favoring the assault weapons ban. It is due to expire Sept. 13 unless extended by Congress, and some of the speakers urged Vice President Dick Cheney to use last night's speech to the NRA to commit to an extension.
One speaker, Dr. Barbara Gaines, trauma surgeon and co-director of the Benedum trauma program at Children's Hospital, said on average 10 or so children die of gunshot wounds daily in the U.S. Sometimes it's an accidental discharge, or a child hit unintentionally, or a teenager who uses a gun to escape depression.
"The key to protecting our kids is to protect them from guns, protect them from access to guns and from gun availability, so that kids aren't in the way of gunfire," she said.
Pittsburgh Police Cmdr. William Valenta said one in five law enforcement officers killed between 1998 and 2001 was felled by an assault weapon. "We recognize how important it is in the law enforcement community to support an extension of the ban on assault-type weapons," he said.
State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, said the ban needs to be not only reauthorized but strengthened. And he said it should be made a central issue in both in the Pennsylvania Senate race and the race for president.
Unable to enter the building, about 100 protesters against the NRA took up position just outside the convention center yesterday afternoon after marching from the Hill District and from across the Allegheny River. The "Confluence Against Gun Violence," like the noon news conference, was organized by an ad-hoc coalition of local social justice and violence prevention groups.
Four police officers on motorcycles stopped traffic at every intersection as about 50 protestors marched from Freedom Corner in the Hill District to the convention center, shouting, "Bush, Cheney, NRA. Take your guns and go away."
Owning guns might be a constitutional right, but its framers couldn't have intended to allow the kind of violent society the gun industry has helped create, according to Celeste Taylor, an executive committee member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
"It isn't about freedom," said Taylor, of Point Breeze. "It's about who has the most money, and who has the most power to influence public policy."
Toni McClendon, 55, said she was troubled by the double standard she feels society applies to some gun owners. The Black Panthers were prosecuted for using firearms to defend themselves and their families from the police, she said.
"It's like, 'You're being violent and terrorist because you belong to a certain segment of society, but we're protecting our homes,' " said McClendon, of Swissvale.
The NRA, in fact, seems intent on whipping up its members' fears in an attempt to justify owning guns as a means of self-defense, said Jason Vrabel, 30, of Friendship.
"The NRA perpetuates these beliefs that there's an intruder behind every tree and has been obstructionist to any attempts to make reasonable changes to existing laws," said Vrabel, who was wearing a red bull's-eye paper-clipped to the front of his T-shirt to demonstrate that "the NRA's positions make us all targets of gun violence."
But should crooks and the police be the only people to own guns? asked John Lesko of Youngstown, Ohio, as he left the convention center and stiffly walked past the protestors. Didn't he have the right to protect himself and his family from intruders?
Guns are not dangerous if the people who own them are responsible, he said.
"If you respect it and treat it respectfully and teach your children how to respect it, you won't have a problem," Lesko said of firearms. "That's how I was raised and that's how I plan to raise my son."
(Bill Schackner can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-1977. Amy McConnell can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-1548.)
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04109/302610.stm
Convention delegates calmly dismiss objections by small, vocal group
Sunday, April 18, 2004
By Bill Schackner and Amy McConnell, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tom Mauser, whose son was killed in the Columbine High School massacre, donned the tennis shoes that Daniel wore as he was shot and marched them yesterday into the heart of the nation's gun lobby.
After a news conference Downtown in which he and other speakers decried gun violence and urged extension of the federal ban on assault weapons, Mauser led several other activists on a four-block walk to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
There, Mauser entered but was turned away from the National Rifle Association's annual convention.
Along with the gray and blue tennis shoes returned to him by Colorado authorities a few weeks back, Mauser, 52, a Finleyville native, carried a placard with his 15-year-old son's picture and a letter Mauser sent to Charlton Heston and the NRA a few weeks after his son's 1999 death. The letter, which Mauser said was never answered, urged among other things that the NRA "quit protecting the dark side of the gun trade."
"Yes, I'm a bit angry, but who wouldn't be," the letter stated. "Have you ever lost a child, Mr. Heston?"
On the sidewalk approaching the hall, Mauser encountered skeptical looks and sarcasm from some convention-goers who say those protesting assault weapons unfairly link the NRA to violence. Shortly after entering the convention hall, security personnel told Mauser he lacked a protest permit. They quickly ushered him back outside.
LaRae Lorsung, an NRA member from Callaway, Minn., looked annoyed as Mauser and the other marchers passed her with half a dozen TV cameras surrounding them.
"I think they ought to go home," she said of the protesters. "I feel bad for those people, but it isn't the guns or the gun makers. It's the criminals."
"Cars kill people. They're not trying to ban cars," she said. "Knives kill people. They're not trying to ban knives."
The noon news conference was sponsored by a coalition of groups favoring the assault weapons ban. It is due to expire Sept. 13 unless extended by Congress, and some of the speakers urged Vice President Dick Cheney to use last night's speech to the NRA to commit to an extension.
One speaker, Dr. Barbara Gaines, trauma surgeon and co-director of the Benedum trauma program at Children's Hospital, said on average 10 or so children die of gunshot wounds daily in the U.S. Sometimes it's an accidental discharge, or a child hit unintentionally, or a teenager who uses a gun to escape depression.
"The key to protecting our kids is to protect them from guns, protect them from access to guns and from gun availability, so that kids aren't in the way of gunfire," she said.
Pittsburgh Police Cmdr. William Valenta said one in five law enforcement officers killed between 1998 and 2001 was felled by an assault weapon. "We recognize how important it is in the law enforcement community to support an extension of the ban on assault-type weapons," he said.
State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, said the ban needs to be not only reauthorized but strengthened. And he said it should be made a central issue in both in the Pennsylvania Senate race and the race for president.
Unable to enter the building, about 100 protesters against the NRA took up position just outside the convention center yesterday afternoon after marching from the Hill District and from across the Allegheny River. The "Confluence Against Gun Violence," like the noon news conference, was organized by an ad-hoc coalition of local social justice and violence prevention groups.
Four police officers on motorcycles stopped traffic at every intersection as about 50 protestors marched from Freedom Corner in the Hill District to the convention center, shouting, "Bush, Cheney, NRA. Take your guns and go away."
Owning guns might be a constitutional right, but its framers couldn't have intended to allow the kind of violent society the gun industry has helped create, according to Celeste Taylor, an executive committee member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
"It isn't about freedom," said Taylor, of Point Breeze. "It's about who has the most money, and who has the most power to influence public policy."
Toni McClendon, 55, said she was troubled by the double standard she feels society applies to some gun owners. The Black Panthers were prosecuted for using firearms to defend themselves and their families from the police, she said.
"It's like, 'You're being violent and terrorist because you belong to a certain segment of society, but we're protecting our homes,' " said McClendon, of Swissvale.
The NRA, in fact, seems intent on whipping up its members' fears in an attempt to justify owning guns as a means of self-defense, said Jason Vrabel, 30, of Friendship.
"The NRA perpetuates these beliefs that there's an intruder behind every tree and has been obstructionist to any attempts to make reasonable changes to existing laws," said Vrabel, who was wearing a red bull's-eye paper-clipped to the front of his T-shirt to demonstrate that "the NRA's positions make us all targets of gun violence."
But should crooks and the police be the only people to own guns? asked John Lesko of Youngstown, Ohio, as he left the convention center and stiffly walked past the protestors. Didn't he have the right to protect himself and his family from intruders?
Guns are not dangerous if the people who own them are responsible, he said.
"If you respect it and treat it respectfully and teach your children how to respect it, you won't have a problem," Lesko said of firearms. "That's how I was raised and that's how I plan to raise my son."
(Bill Schackner can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-1977. Amy McConnell can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-1548.)
Luckily a fellow gun owner set her straight without even knowing it... 
