WorldNetDaily
Friday, July 6, 2001

A tale of tragic irony
By Joseph Farah

Barbara Graham was sentenced to 10 years to life for shooting and paralyzing an innocent 23-year-old man she blamed for killing her 19-year-old son.

That's a triple tragedy, for Graham is a 49-year-old mother who has now been removed from her other children.

It's also ironic beyond words because Barbara Graham is an active member of a Maryland group that helped organize the Million Mom March against firearms last year in Washington.

Let me repeat that: Barbara Graham used a gun to paralyze an innocent man, is pleading for leniency from the courts for her actions, and she is an activist involved in demanding that firearm possession be more severely restricted in this country.

To top it off, when she was arrested in the shooting case, police found two guns at her bedside.

Graham had supporters throughout her trial – leaders of the Million Moms group. Even though she owned guns and used one to shoot an innocent man, she is a heroine, in an odd sort of way, to a group that seeks more government controls on firearms, more limits on gun possession, maybe even an outright ban on them.

Hello? Earth to the Million Moms – why does this not compute?

By the way, Graham, who sometimes uses other names – like Lipscomb and Martin – did not shoot Kikko Smith in a fit of rage or on instinct. She is convicted of plotting an ambush of him along with a co-defendant, Erskine Moorer, who has already been sentenced to 15 years to life in the case.

Meanwhile, a trial has been set for Daniel William Jackson Jr., the accused shooter of Graham's son.

I raise all this with you today because I think it symbolizes the total disconnect from reality that infects the minds of those who want to seize my guns and your guns but see no problem possessing and using guns themselves. Clearly, if anyone in this country should be denied the right to own a gun, it's someone like Graham. Yet, she is one of the organizers of the anti-gun movement.

It's incredible. Yet it's a story that has hardly been told – a factoid that is probably too discomfiting to warrant big play in the pro-government, anti-freedom, anti-Second Amendment big media.

For instance, here's how the Washington Post played it last Wednesday in its metro section: "A grieving mother convicted of shooting a young man she blamed for her son's killing was sentenced to 10 years to life yesterday in an unusual case that laid bare the despair and rage of the city's gun battles."

You had to read until paragraph 14 of the story to get the connection to the Million Mom March.

It kind of reminds me of a silly incident that occurred last summer when my wife and I were in Philadelphia around the time of a Million Mom demonstration.

We were walking around Independence Mall, minding our own business, as they say. The Million Moms (there were really only a few dozen) had thousands of shoes on display representing the victims of gun violence. Elizabeth pointed out that they were using faulty statistics in their display. She told them they were "an abomination" in the sight of Independence Hall and all it represented with regard to the birth of freedom in America. She let them know of the statistics demonstrating that thousands of times a day guns actually prevent violence.

A commotion ensued and an older, wild-haired man (obviously not a mom, but a sympathizer) appeared to be on the verge of assaulting my wife. He was being held back from physically attacking my wife who was guarded only by four of our daughters, then 14, 11, 8 and eight weeks.

I looked on in amazement, but I wasn't a bit worried. I knew Elizabeth could deck this would-be assailant. He'd be out for the count. He would never even know what hit him. But I thought it was interesting that these practitioners and advocates of nonviolence and disarmament were not eager to engage in civil debate, but were rather quick to resort to fisticuffs.

It didn't faze this bum that he was threatening the mother of a newborn only a few feet away. After all, he was fighting for a bigger cause – disarming every man, woman and child in America and thus destroying the very foundations of our freedom.

That's right. With Independence Day 2001 just behind us, it ought to be fresh in our minds that too many good men have sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and risked their sacred honor fighting for the right to keep and bear arms – the cornerstone of a free society.

And, indeed, that's what firearms represent. Without a well-armed citizenry, the government has a monopoly on force – and will use it every time.

I feel sorry for Barbara Graham – or whatever her real name is. I feel sorry for her comrades among the so-called Million Moms. They don't get it. They are simply not firing on all cylinders. They are walking, talking anachronisms. They don't have a clue. And, ironically, they don't even believe in the idiotic rhetoric they espouse.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23518