|
EDITORIAL History, hope merge as moms march
There were less than a million at
the Million Mom March, but also more -- a parade of women that stretches across
America and beyond our shores. They were and are protesting against guns, which
are matters of life and death, which is where women, to oversimplify, excel.
Time will tell whether theirs was a one-day wonder or the beginning of a new
politics, but hope did surge briefly May 14.
Its not always easy to read the signs of the times. The din
on television was as loud as on the Mall in Washington. Debate, no doubt, was
always so: humans outshouting each other or being outshouted. All too often the
loudest voice prevails. But occasionally the still, small voice of reason or
inspiration leaps above the noise. It could be heard distinctly that
Sunday.
The small voice is all too timid, it could be argued, its
agenda surprisingly modest: a call for registration of all handguns; the
licensing of handgun owners; mandatory safety locks; and thorough background
checks before all gun sales. This is small potatoes when the mothers could be
asking for the abolition of 90 percent of the countrys guns, which would
put us on a par with most of the rest of the world.
Slogans and stale arguments ricochet off every television screen.
Guns dont kill people, people do -- and more of the same. Then there is
the old standby of the National Rifle Association: Theres no need for new
laws if we would just enforce the laws we have, this chestnut goes. (On the
subject of guns, the NRA should get equal time with plumbers, clowns and,
lets say, clergy, but they are presented as one side of the shouting
match as if they were half of the population.) The small voice spoke up May 14
and said there are a multitude of rules for the road, but still theres
need to register cars and license drivers, part of the price we pay for living
together more safely. But these clichés are only echoes of the
cacophony, of the way our fears and animosities fester and result in the
shouting and shooting that is the jittery current state of the human race.
All the small voices became for a day a big voice and scared the
hell out of the NRA, which referred to the march as a political agenda
masquerading as motherhood. This mothers march is not the first or
the last march. History is full of such memorable occasions. Many of these
outings become history petrified on the spot. Some, however, go marching on,
and the ideas behind them grow legs -- the ideas whose time has come.
Its a small hope in the real world: that commonsense might
prevail and the guns get put away, and that the country in time might become a
great national gun museum. Yet the small voice says a day will surely come when
we as a race will look back and see with astonishment how insane our situation
was, how utterly, incredibly stupid. If that day fails to come, God help
us.
National Catholic Reporter, May 26,
2000
|
|