by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Maybe it was the absence of a parade of Hollywood celebrities.

Maybe it was the absence of millions of dollars in promotional support and powerful media promotion.

Maybe it was the absence of support from the White House and the headline appearance of the First Lady.

Or maybe it was none of these things, but the change in American enthusiasm for more gun control since Sept. 11, 2001.

Whatever the reason and by whatever measurement, the anti-gun extravaganza held on May 9 in Washington, DC, was a bust.

The “Million” Mom March (MMM) on Mother’s Day 2000 never lived up to its billing either, drawing less than a tenth of the predicted number. But this year’s edition of the anti-gun Mother’s Day event may not even have drawn as many as 2,000 supporters. Some media counts guestimated the crowd support at “thousands,” a few at “over 3,000” but the majority could not bring themselves to count the crowd as more than 2,000.

And there was not the heavy dosage of breathless media reporting, nor the hours of CSPAN live cable coverage. In fact, national network and even local news reports were brief and often got the message wrong.

The theme for this year’s MMM gathering was spelled out in countless advance e-mails and website messages as well as full page newspaper ads as “Halt the Assault.”

But some of the media reports even failed to mention the gun ban, focusing instead on the secondary goals of background checks on private gun sales at gun events and re-imposing the five-day waiting period for gun purchases.

With that kind of limited coverage and mixed message, this year’s “Million” Mom event was an even bigger bust than four years ago. So much so that some of their pet commentators in the press and on television made haste to downplay the tiny turnout for the march and urge people not to underestimate the “Moms.”

The MMM started the day with an interfaith religious observance and then settled for low-wattage political celebrities and a handful of “victim” spokespersons.

As they did last year, the grassroots, Internet-based Second Amendment Sisters (SAS) organized a Mother’s Day counter-rally which was held at Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets early in the day. The pro-gun, pro-self-defense SAS event was billed as the Second Amendment Freedoms for Everyone Rally (SAFER rally). The Sisters didn’t draw as well as they did in 2000 either, but proportionally made a better showing than the MMM.

Miss New Mexico Teen, 16-year-old Sarah Roush, was at the rally wearing a full-length dark-blue satin gown and her tiara. She said guns are a big part of her life, and that she has used beauty pageants as a venue to champion gun-use.

Roush says she comes from a small town in New Mexico, where guns are “a family thing.” She says all of her relatives shoot guns—including her father, her mother, her older brother and her cousins.

(Click to read Hindsight for commentary.)