By Ayala Ben-Yehuda
Little Neck resident Joan Gold will never forget the time she and her husband were held up at gunpoint while on vacation in St. Martin more than a decade ago.
But it is the everyday gun violence that claims thousands of lives in the United States every year that makes Gold sound the call for Queens participants in this year’s Million Mom March for gun control.
The march, first held in Washington, D.C. in 2000, is making an election-year return to the nation’s capital this Mother’s Day and Gold wants volunteers from Queens to attend in force.
“The NRA has gotten bolder and more aggressive than ever,” Gold said in an interview Friday at her Little Neck home. “We have to get our Congress and our government to listen to us.”
Gold and her husband were vacationing on the Caribbean island of St. Martin about 15 years ago when they were victims of an armed robbery. The thieves chased them and shot at their car as they tried to escape, she said.
“Thank God we didn’t get hurt, but we came close,” Gold said.
But it was to be several more years before she became a gun control activist. Gold was watching the “Today Show” in December 1999 — the year the high school shooting massacre in Littleton, Colo. claimed 15 lives — and saw the organizers of the Million Mom March talk about the need for gun control.
Gold produced a flier from New Yorkers Against Gun Violence that said 30,000 people in the U.S. are killed by guns every year.
“Enough is enough,” she said.
She was inspired to organize some 2,000 people from Queens to attend the initial march four years ago, which became one of the nation’s largest demonstrations with 700,000 people.
“A lot of them were mothers that had never had anything happen to them and wanted to keep it that way,” Gold said.
But there were also mothers whose relatives had shot themselves in suicides or lost children to gang-related gun violence, said Gold, who works with Marie Epstein — a Douglaston woman whose husband was shot to death in a robbery at his East Elmhurst check-cashing store in 1996. An off-duty Jamaica police officer moonlighting as a security guard at the store was also shot and killed in the robbery.
Halt the Assault, as this year’s Million Mom March is themed, is set to take place May 9 on the steps of the Capitol after a series of weekend events including a lobbying day on Capitol Hill and an “NRA Blacklist Ball” honoring gun control advocates.
City Councilmen Hiram Monserrate (D-Corona) and David Weprin (D-Hollis) have already agreed to provide for buses to transport marchers to the event, Gold said.
She called the Bush administration “no friends of ours when it comes to gun control” and said the Million Moms were pressing for renewal and strengthening of the assault weapons ban, background checks and the reinstatement of a five-day waiting period on all gun purchases.
The New York Times recently reported that while Bush came out in favor of the assault weapons ban and background checks during his 2000 presidential campaign, he supported a recent measure in the Senate that would have protected gun manufacturers from lawsuits.
Volunteers, both new ones and those who participated in 2000, are needed to post fliers for the march, fill buses and promote the event.
The first 20 volunteers who join Gold will receive a free gift. To participate in the march, call 718-781-4971 or visit www.mmm2004.com.
Donations to the Million Mom March from the public can also be sent to Box 202, 213-37 39th Ave., Bayside, N.Y. 11361.
Reach reporter Ayala Ben-Yehuda by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 146.
