DENVER – A group of mothers against guns celebrated the first anniversary of the anti-gun Million Mom March this weekend by slinking around a hotel – fearful of the adamant pro-gun activists outside.
“We’re scared,” one Colorado Springs member admitted yesterday as she looked outside a meeting room at the Hyatt Hotel to see dozens of pro-gun protesters demonstrating outside.
“They follow us everywhere, they won’t leave us alone, and they really hate us.” said Elise Richman, head of the Moms’ Westchester, N.Y., chapter. “One of the protesters came up to me in the hotel lobby last night holding a sign saying, ‘Million Moms Warm Up the Ovens, signed Adolph Hitler.'”
One of the protesters was Bill Glass, the battle fatigue-garbed head of Colorado gun group Tyranny Response Team.
“We know who you are,” Glass, a Denver-area gun-store owner, screamed through a bullhorn. “And you will never have a public function again without us being in your face.”
The Tyranny Response Team and other gun groups across the country say they feel threatened by the lightning speed at which the Mom movement has grown.
The movement started with the idea of having a one-time, anti-gun march in Washington last Mother’s Day – after the Columbine HS massacre of 12 Colorado students and the wounding of three kids at a Jewish community center in California.
With the backing of prominent Democrats – First Mom Hillary Clinton and Second Mom Tipper Gore attended the march – the group now boasts about 850,000 members in 232 chapters across 44 states.
Like MADD – Mothers Against Drunk Driving – the Moms’ aim is to convince Congress to toughen laws.
Members were advised this weekend to vote for Democrat Vice President Al Gore, who has called for mandatory safety locks and handgun licenses.
His Republican rival in the presidential race, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, has offered free trigger locks to any Texan who wants one. But Bush has also let a mandatory gun-lock bill die and has signed a bill allowing concealed guns in churches.
Glass admits that his members have been honking horns and shouting through bullhorns outside every Mom meeting in Colorado, and when the Moms leave, he and his associates shine flashlights in their faces and videotape them.
“We do it, and we’re proud of it; they’re trying to take away the American right to bear arms,” he complained to The Post. “But we’re just trying to get in their faces, we’re not trying to provoke violence.”
Meanwhile, the Mom movement has hired two former Secret Service agents to investigate death threats against members, the group’s Executive Director Andrew McGuire said.
While threats have been made to members near Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, he said the most trouble has happened in Colorado, where he suspects gun groups feel particularly threatened since Columbine.
“We take all these threats very seriously, but our security expert assures that the odds of something horrible happening are very slim,” he said.