Second Amendment Sisters Plan March Of Their Own ‘Million Mom Movement Does Not Speak For All Of Us’

Fri., May 12, 2000

By Kevin Blocker kevinb@spokesman.com

Robin Ball wants her kids to live in a safe society. But she doesn’t believe more gun laws will make that happen.

Ball, who owns the Sharp Shooting Indoor Range and Gun Shop in Spokane, left for Washington, D.C., on Thursday to join the Second Amendment Sisters in a demonstration against gun control.

The Second Amendment Sisters hope to attract 1,000 people to their Armed Informed Mothers March at the Washington Monument on Mother’s Day.

It’s one of two gun-related demonstrations planned Sunday in the nation’s capital. The other event is the Million Mom March.

That march has grown into a national grass-roots movement aimed at shaping gun legislation to include mandatory licensing and registration for handgun owners, gun-show background checks, gun locks and other gun-distribution controls.

The marches are expected to draw more than 150,000 people from around the country.

“It’s important for us to be there to let the country know that the Million Mom movement does not speak for all of us,” Ball said.

Ball will be among 40 women joining President Clinton in a discussion on guns in a live broadcast today on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Instead of more gun laws, Ball said municipalities around the country should look to Project Exile.

While cities nationwide sue the gun industry or buy back handguns as last resorts to get them off streets, the program has been credited for helping reverse a decade of rising crime rates in Richmond, Va.

There, prosecutors moved gun offenses into the federal court system where bond is less available, sentences are longer and convicts are sent out of state to serve their terms.

Project Exile has brought together officials from other cities and the National Rifle Association in expanding experiments to see whether violent crime can be reduced by aggressively enforcing laws on the books, rather than fighting over new laws.

Though a panel of federal judges in Richmond has criticized it as a federal intrusion into state matters, Philadelphia and Rochester, N.Y., have adopted versions of the program, and more than a dozen other cities have considered it in the past year.

“We all agree that we want our kids to be safer,” Ball said. “We just think there’s a better way of making that happen.”

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