I was busy on Sunday, Mother's Day, so I didn't get to see much of the news.  I did, however hear a lot of news regarding the Million Mom March (MMM).  After several repeats, it tends to get nauseating when you hear the same misinformation over and over.

The first reports I heard were from ABC news on the radio, reporting that hundreds of thousands of people were marching in D.C.  Great, I thought.  They're marching in the city with the highest rate of homicide in the nation, the city that banned handguns twenty some years ago.  I wondered if some crack-dealing punk would "cap" someone just because the streets were crowded.  That'd be a nightmare, I thought.

It was afternoon and I'd picked up a nice BBQ dinner for Mom and was headed to her house when I head a distinctly different tone to the news.  I checked and yup, still listening to ABC news. This time, however, the voice said that tens of thousands were protesting for more gun-control.  That's an order-of-magnitude drop.  Then I noticed that the previous long report that included several sound bytes was much shorter. I wondered why.
 

Far Short of a Million Moms

It turns out that the march fell far short of its expectations.  Some reports, notably on CNN and a few other stations, said that there were 500,000 people on the mall.  But by afternoon that was revised downward by other sources.  Even as late as this morning, some were still reporting figures between 150,000 and 200,000.  So I set to find out.

The first photo I found was this one, to the left.  Look closely at the far end towards the capitol and you can see empty green space beyond the two white banners. And you can see a white tent in the foreground too, but you don't see the edges of the crowd well.  This "narrow" field of view makes it seem like a large crowd.  I will point out that this photo does show several large patches of green grass too, meaning that people aren't terribly crowded together.  Keep in mind that the MMM organizers originally claimed there were some 500,000 people present.  That's one-half million people. That's nearly as many people as every person in San Jose, Ca., in the Silicon Valley.   But look at other photos on this page an you'll see a different view of the crowd.

This other photo shows an aerial shot from an ABC news segment which was videotaped on Sunday. ABC, not surprisingly, cut away a few frames later and this image was the clearest of the group.  You'll notice in the ABC image the photographer's position is reversed. The large square banners seen in the first photo are at the bottom of the picture.  This means you are looking towards the photographer of the first photograph.  You can see that behind that photographer there were not that many people.  In fact, you can see a nearly clear walkway cutting across the mall.  The grass near the ABC logo is the same grass you see closest to the Capitol building in the first photo. It would appear that the photographer in the first photo was somewhere near the third white tent/awning from the top-right of the ABC image.  Later estimates moved the number of attendees down to between 20,000 and 50,000, depending on who was giving out the numbers.  Strangely enough, the National Park Service has not provided their estimate of the crowd size, something the NPS routinely does for the media on other events.  I wonder if the low turnout embarrassed the White House enough that they told the National Park Service to withhold their estimate.

For a valid comparison, let's take a look at a different, much larger, rally on the same mall.  This next image is from the Promise Keepers March, a conservative effort to keep the country on track.  Estimates from the NPS and others put the number of people between 800,000 and 1 Million.  Notice the difference between this photo and the ABC photograph above?  While it is a much better shot than the ABC photo, you'll notice three things.  (1) you don't see any green grass showing through this crowd at all. (2) you can't see the walkways cutting across the mall. In fact, it's hard to see much of any of the concrete walkways down either side as well.  (3) This place is full. From near the capitol to the bottom of the photo (closest to the Washington Monument).

Even if the MMM organizers claim that the bulk of the protests were taking place at "70 other cities" around the nation, their exaggeration about the D.C. crowd makes them suspect.  Take for instance the estimates in the news that "1,500 people who rallied in Los Angeles".  A pretty dismal showing if you ask me.  The L.A. area is home to some eight million people.  The Pomona Gun Show used to draw 1,500 people on Friday afternoons alone and three to four times that many on Saturday.  Then we have the report that in "Chicago, a crowd estimated at more than 4,000 people" marched.  Neither of these estimates were documented as to who estimated the crowd size.  But if in major meto areas like Chicago and L.A. they drew those numbers, the numbers in smaller towns and cities were likely proportionally smaller.  Even if we average these numbers to get 2,750 people and apply that to 70 cities (as if that many actually did march) that's still under 200,000 people. Given the apparent size of the crowd in the ABC photos, it appears that the Million Mom March pulled less than 200,000 people nationwide!

Moms Breaking The Law?

The Million Mom March is listed with the IRS as an 501(c)-3 Corporation. This gives them tax exempt
status. Part of the restrictions placed on a tax exempt corporation is that they are FORBIDDEN to devote a substantial portion of their activities for lobbying purposes.

Lobbying is defined as "carrying on propaganda or otherwise trying to influence legislation". Also "urging individuals to contact their legislators to propose, support or oppose legislation". If you look at their web site it says "We the mothers are calling on congress to enact common sense legislation by Mothers Day 2000."

Now I'm sure that the organizers of this rally are entitled to every legitimate tax break and "loophole" in the law as any other group or organization.  However, the 501(c)-3 status is usually very jealously protected by the IRS to prevent people from taking undue advantage and avoiding paying taxes.  Having been involved in a 501(c) group before, I know that there are special requirements you must comply with, as mentioned above. More than one California motocycle organization very nearly lost their 501(c) status over gathering signatures opposing the proposed helmet law.   Obviously, someone the IRS fraud line at 1-800-829-0433 to complain.  I'm not saying you should do so, but if you need the address for the Million Mom March, I'm told that it is:

White House And DNC Backing

There has been some speculation over just how "grassroots" the Million Mom March really was. In introducing the organizer of the MMM earlier this week, CNN reported "the march is the brainchild of a New Jersey mother, Donna Dees-Thomases, who conceived of the idea as she watched footage of a shooting at an area day camp."  Fine and dandy, if that were the whole truth.

What none of the television media outlets told you and few of the newspapers said, is who is Donna Dees-Thomases?.  Ms. Dees-Thomases has served as the publicist for the CBS News anchor Dan Rather, and is also sister-in-law of Susan Thomases who is a close friend and the chief political adviser to Hillary Clinton.  And as we know by now, both Hillary and Bill Clinton are definitely anti-gun ownership.  With the ability to have "power-lunches" with Washington's elite, some people are starting to wonder if an audit of the DNC's funds might be in order.  But this also goes to show you how much you don't know about this kind of "grassroots" event. The media knew of this information (after all, other non-mainstream news web-zines have published this) but failed to inform its viewers or readers.

Voices of Representation

Sometimes we are reminded not to kill the message bearer because they are bringing us bad news.  That adage tries to remind us that the bearer isn't the source or cause of the bad news, simply the courier.  Unfortunately in this case, the "courier" is more like a carrier of plague than simply a newsboy.  Many news reports told us who some of the celebrities were at the march.  You couldn't miss seeing their names, probably because their publicists were hawking handouts to the press to make sure their clients' names were in the news.

Watch enough television news and you'll notice that when the news organization doesn't like a group or organization, they seek out the least photogenic, least "mainstream" looking person in the crowd to interview.  If they put lots of "ahhs" and "uhmms" in their statements and look stupid, they get shown on T.V.  to show the audience how unlikeable the group is.

So that brings me to some of the spokespeople for the MMM.  Let's start off with their featured emcee.

Rosie O'Donnell
According to news reports, Rep.Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y invited Ms. O'Donnell and asked her to participate. Rep McCarthy, as you may know, ran for her seat on a staunch anti-gun platform after her husband was killed on a Long Island subway in supposedly "gun restrictive" New York.  Ms. O'Donnell is another matter. I have no serious issue with her non-heterosexual preference, but I do have serious reservations about her leanings towards totalitarinism.  Ms. O'Donnell, using her talk show as a platform, advocated the summary incarceration of all gun owners and seizure of their firearms.  Apparently Ms. O'Donnell thinks that it's quite alright to jail law-abiding, productive citizens and deprive them of their property without due process (i.e. a trial). Someone should perhaps remind Rosie that these tactics were applied to both homosexuals and Jews in Hitler's Germany.

Courtney Love
Actress and rock musician Courtney Love gave an emotional speech calling current U.S. gun laws "nihilistic and barbaric".  That's quite an interesting quote, especially as I didn't give Ms. Love credit for knowing the definition of nihilistic. Considering Ms. Love's history in music, from performing nearly topless to throwing herself into the "mosh pit" and letting fans strip off her clothes, it's no wonder she's trying to become an actress. I've even heard some accounts of the heavy drug use and binge drinking when she was married to Kurt Cobain.  In case you didn't know it, Cobain committed suicide with a shotgun after a night of drugs and alcohol.  Apparently Ms. Love doesn't think substance abuse contributed to Cobain's death -- it was that evil nasty shotgun.

Bill Clinton
"Well, the Supreme Court says there's a constitutional right to travel," Clinton said. "But we license car owners, and we register cars, and we have speed limits, and we have child safety restraint laws, and we have seat belt laws ... When's the last time you heard somebody stand up and give a speech about the eminent evils of car control?"
Yes, Mr. President, we do have all those things.  But I don't recall seeing any constitutional right to "keep and drive" an automobile.  Perhaps Henry Ford overlooked that.  Mr. Clinton doesn't tell you that the reason we have those restrictions is because we are driving on government-owned land... highways.  You paid taxes for them and the government gets to regulate what can drive on them.  Want to drive to D.C. and tell him off?  You can drive a car without seatbelts, airbags, registration or lights at any speed you want, so long as you drive it on private lands the whole way.

Hillary Clinton
Mrs. Clinton said the mothers "have a very simple Mother's Day message. We don't want flowers or jewelry. We don't want a nice card or a fancy meal as much as we want our Congress to do the right thing to protect our children."   Fine and dandy.  But I always thought it was a parent's job to protect their children.  Okay Congress, let's get to work.  According to Mrs. Clinton you have a lot of work to do.  You have to ban swimming pools, chest-freezers, matches, lighters, fireworks, bathtubs, pesticides, asprin, bicycles, slingshots, power tools and a host of other devices.  But let's not forget the number one killer of children - the automobile. To quote MMM organizer Donna Dees-Thomases, "it's worth a little inconvenience to save a child's life".  Strangely, though, Mrs. Clinton wants to "protect our children", yet she wants to limit the right of the parents to have that most signficant tool they or their children could have when it comes to protecting them from crime.

Counter Point
I was going to say something here about the Million Mom March, however I found someone else who left a message in the Usenet newsgroup talk.politics.guns that says it elloquently.
 

"I didn't spend Sunday marching in protest. I spent it in church with my family and
other good moms who put their familes first."

Amen!

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