I vividly remember Barbara Graham’s appearance on CNN during last year’s “Million Mom March” because she symbolized everything that is wrong with the gun control argument. Here she was on national television explaining the tragic death of her son who was murdered in Washington, DC, in 1999. Graham went out about how stricter gun control laws would have prevented her son’s death, the only problem being that Washington, DC, already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country (not to worry, when they can’t buy guns, criminals make them — a 1986 study found that 20% of illegal guns seized in the district were homemade weapons).
I felt sorry for her loss, but that’s no reason to go around arguing for ineffective laws that ultimately end up disarming victims.
Anyway, it turns out Graham herself appreciated the power of guns, and decided to avenge her son’s death by shooting the man responsible. As with her gun control efforts, however, Graham went after the wrong target — she mistakenly shot the wrong person! She ended up shooting Kikko Smith who is now paralyzed from the waist down. Smith remains in the hospital with a bullet lodged in his spine.
On February 1, Graham was convicted on nine separate charges and faces up to 50+ years in jail.
One of the interesting aspects of the case is how liberal newspapers chose to cover it. The Washington Post, for example, ran several stories on Graham’s trial over the past couple weeks but somehow never thought it was relevant to point out Graham’s prominence at the “Million Mom March.” If Graham had been a member of an “extremist” organization such as the National Rifle Association and had actively protested and spoken out on the right of people to bear arms, it is hard to believe that The Post wouldn’t have found a way to include this prominently in their stories. In fact, the headlines would have almost certainly read “Gun Advocate Convicted of Murder” or some such headline rather than the plain old “Mother convicted in shooting” headlines The Post went with.
When guns are outlawed, apparently only gun control activists will have guns.
Source:
Mother Convicted in Shooting. Donna St. George, The Washington Post, February 2, 2001.
‘Million Mom’ activist convicted in shooting. Jon Dougherty, WorldNetDaily.Com, February 5, 2001.
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