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But such baby steps aren't enough for Dees-Thomases, 42, a housewife and mother of two young children from Short Hills, N.J., who is trying to turn her outrage over gun violence into a national movement. If each of us has a tipping point for tragedy, Dees-Thomases' happened last August, as she watched TV coverage of nursery-school children holding hands in a line and being led away from a shooting spree at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, Calif. "I just thought, 'Those children could be my own!'" she says. "So I decided to try and do something before it was too late." Dees-Thomases scrawled her plans for a march on Washington on the back of an envelope. Within a week, she had reserved the Mall for an event she didn't yet have any participants for. Classified ads in local papers advertised an 800 number, and contacts with gun-violence victims' groups across the country helped disseminate the word through e-mail and Internet news groups.
As news of the march spread and moms from around the country called in, Dees-Thomases used her talent for generating publicity--she once worked as a press aide to a U.S. Senator and later as a publicist for Dan Rather and David Letterman--to gather corporate sponsors such as Viacom, Stride Rite and Oxygen Media to cover the $2.3 million budget for the march. The Bell Campaign, a gun-control group funded by heirs to the Levi's blue-jean fortune, is picking up any shortfall. Dees-Thomases now has a small paid staff and a battalion of volunteers who answer 75 phones and stuff mountains of envelopes. Dees-Thomases was pleased last week when the National Park Service raised its attendance prediction to 150,000, which would make the march the largest rally ever held for gun control.
Concern over gun violence has been building even as the number of Americans killed by guns has fallen--down almost 20% from 1993 to 1998. Among children too gun deaths have fallen, tumbling 28% from a peak in 1994 to 1997, when 4,223 kids died by gunshot. But highly publicized shootings like those at Columbine have changed perceptions. A recent TIME/Discovery Channel poll showed that 70% of parents feel violence in schools has increased. What's more, Americans no longer see gun threats against kids as a problem confined to inner cities. While violent crime has fallen sharply in urban areas--down 10% from 1997 to 1998--it has slipped just 1% in suburbia.
Established advocacy groups such as Handgun Control have helped Dees-Thomases and her moms refine their message, moving from a sheer expression of outrage over gun killings to a call for what they term "common-sense gun laws"--tougher background checks, longer "cooling-off" periods before buying a gun and mandatory safety locks on handguns. The Million Moms agenda also insists that Congress regulate guns the way states do automobiles: by licensing the owner and registering the gun.
The Million Moms are blatantly using motherhood to sell their message. The march will feature a stroller parade and a family tent, so parents have a place to take young children when they get antsy during the speeches. Ann Stevens, a mother of three from Springfield, Va., says, "I told my husband that this year, instead of breakfast in bed, I want to do this for Mother's Day. I have children, and I want them to be around years from now."