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By Salon News Staff [May 14, 2000]

In the shadow of the Washington monument, just a few hundred yards from the 750,000 mothers gathered to demand stronger gun control measures, several hundred people converged at a rambunctious counterprotest dubbed "Second Amendment Sisters -- A Celebration of Life." The event, the inverse of that led by Rosie O'Donnell in front of the Capitol, offered some of the day's most colorful moments and signage.

Second Amendment Sisters founder Kimberly Watson said the event grew out of postings on the Free Republic Web site by like-minded women, who were offended at the self-righteousness of the Million Mom March's message and wanted to stage a counterprotest. "Just a few weeks ago, I was a mom. Now, I'm a Second Amendment Sister," she told the audience.

Like Free Republic itself, the protest drew a diverse crowd united in its distrust of government and loathing of President Clinton, whose impeachment was regularly invoked at the event. The group even organized its own dueling march down Constitution Avenue, which, packed with kiddies and strollers, offered a diminutive mirror image of the day's bigger, better-publicized event.

Speakers included Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia Hupp, who witnessed the murder of her parents and 21 others in the 1991 massacre at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas; Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, who found a way to tie the Second Amendment to President Clinton's sexual improprieties by implying that Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Gennifer Flowers and Clinton's other women could have warded off his advances had they only brandished weapons; and Yale Law School scholar and "More Guns, Less Crime" author John Lott.

Gratia Hupp recalled her parents' murder and said that her only sorrow was that the handgun she could have used to save them was a 100 yards away in her car, instead of in her purse, when she needed it.

Does Gratia Hupp harbor any contempt or hatred for George Hennard, the gunman who killed her parents? No, she told the crowd. "You don't get mad at a rabid dog; you shoot it." To Gratia Hupp, the calls by the Million Mom March organizers for mandatory gun registration are just a precursor to outright confiscation, a first tile in what would surely result in a domino effect. "I will not register my gun," she told the crowd to huge applause.

When asked by Salon how she felt about the demand of the moms on the other side of the National Mall for mandatory child safety locks on guns, Gratia Hupp said, "Kids jump in buckets every day and drown -- why don't we put lid locks on them?" She also noted that "a large number of kids are killed by dressers falling on them," but offered no statistics to back up the statement. She also said, "More kids are killed accidentally in cars. Why don't we put helmets on kids in cars?" When the reporter reminded Gratia Hupp that many states have enacted tough seat belt laws to reduce the death toll from automobile accidents, she got angry and, in a thick "Don't mess with Texas" accent, offered, "I'm not even gonna go down that road with you."

Judicial Watch's Klayman provided a different take on protective armor: "If the president wants a trigger lock, have him install it on his zipper," Klayman said from the stage. Evoking more illustrious times for his organization, Klayman also suggested that "Juanita Broaddrick wouldn't have been raped if she had had a gun."

As at the Million Mom March, where speeches were heavy with statistics, the speakers at the Second Amendment Sisters event event offered a few of their own: