(NEW YORK) MintPress — Jackie Rowe-Adams knows only too well how painful it is to lose a child. The 64-year-old New York City Parks Department recreation manager has lost two children to gun violence.
In February of 1982, her 17-year-old son Anthony was murdered outside a bodega in Harlem by two young men who believed that Anthony had been staring at them. Then, her son Tyrone, age 28 at the time, was shot to death by a 13-year-old during a robbery outside his apartment in Baltimore.
Speaking of her two losses, Rowe-Adams explained, “Either I was going to hate teenagers, or I was going to do something.” She decided to do something, and along with another woman from her neighborhood founded Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E. (Stop Another Violent End).
The goal, said Rowe-Adams, is to prolong the lives of Harlem’s youth by preventing gun violence and its social causes and costs.
In that effort, she reached out to National Rifle Association (NRA) leader Wayne LaPierre at the NRA’s annual meeting in St. Louis in April and asked him to help her group contain street violence. He said he would.
“I understand your pain, he said,” she recalled in an interview with the New York Daily News. “I thought he was sincere.”
Rowe-Adams said when she asked LaPierre to back microstamping legislation, he argued against stricter gun control. “We want to stop it more than anyone,” he said at the time. “But the way to do that is to start enforcing the federal gun laws on the books.”
She said she then requested that the NRA participate in a Harlem “peace walk” scheduled for this weekend. The two exchanged contact information, and LaPierre said he would be in touch.
But he and his staff have since ignored repeated phone calls and two letters from Rowe-Adams.
“I’m disappointed,” she said. “I’m not naive, but I wanted us to work together. This man is not a man of his word.”
Vocal advocate
For 21 years, LaPierre has been the Executive Vice President and chief political strategist of the NRA.
Under his guidance, the NRA lobbies on behalf of stand-your-ground laws and offers insurance to members to pay for the legal costs of shooting people in so-called self-defense. LaPierre has worked hard to make it easier for people to buy and use guns, aggressively lobbying elected officials to oppose any kind of gun control.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, since 1990, the gun rights lobby has contributed $27.7 million to candidates for Congress and the White House, 86 percent of it to Republicans.
In contrast, the gun control lobby has donated only $1.9 million to politicians, 94 percent of it to Democrats.
LaPierre recently gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington in which he said that President Obama was part of a “conspiracy to ensure re-election by lulling gun owners to sleep.”
“All that first term lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term.” He also warned that “gun owners across America have fought to achieve over the past three decades could be lost” if Obama wins a second term.
High death toll
“Violent crimes threaten our communities and rob our society of promising young people and decent citizens at alarming numbers each year,” says Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E. on its website.
According to recent reports, it claims, 85 people die every day from gun violence, 35 of them murdered.
In addition, homicides occurred at higher rates among males and persons 20-24 years; rates were highest among non-Hispanic black males. And the number of black children and teens killed by gunfire since 1979 is more than 10 times the number of black citizens of all ages lynched in American history.
In Harlem itself in 2007, 41 people were killed in the three police precincts that cover it, more than double the 19 killed there in 2005.
When confronted with such figures, the NRA has responded that the Second Amendment gives all Americans the right to possess guns of all kinds, not just hunting rifles but also machine guns and semi-automatics. In addition, it has argued, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E. disagrees on both counts and continues to focus on activism, victim services and education.
And Rowe-Adams isn’t letting Wayne LaPierre off the hook without a fight. “He made a commitment,” she said. “I’m going to keep calling and writing until I get an answer.”