Identifying herself as a half-century resident of Culver City, Margo Bennett sought the City Council’s help last evening in taming what she saw as an outbreak of weapons gone wild.
As the executive secretary of a group of unknown size or content, Women Against Gun Violence, Ms. Bennett asked for two favors to be placed on the next Council agenda:
- Support of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban, and
- To declare agreement with another unknown grouping, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, “a nonpartisan organization of over 800 mayors from big cities and small towns.”
Ms. Bennett said that Women Against Gun Violence flowered 20 years ago, amidst the fumes of rioting, the result of an agreement between Ann Reiss Lane, a member of the Los Angeles Police Commission, and feminist Betty Friedan.
Men and joined with women in her group, she said, to give California one of the strongest sets of laws anywhere controlling gun chaos.
“Each day in the United States,” she said, “over 1,000 people are directly affected by gun violence. That does not include grieving family, friends or the community at-large. It does include 87 people a day killed in homicides, by suicide or by unintentional shootings.
“It does include 200 people a day shot and injured.
“It does include 732 people a day who are victims of armed robberies or aggravated assaults with a gun.
“How,” Ms. Bennett asked, “does this affect Culver City?
“We are not an island. We are members of the larger community of Los Angeles County, of California and of our nation.
“Those 20 children who were massacred in Newtown, the 34 people who die each and every day, and the children who are killed each and every day in the United States, they are part of our national tragedy as well.
“Being a community member means we must also be part of the solution,” Ms. Bennett said.
By this time, Mayor Andy Weissman had managed to grasp the rudiments of her message. Quickly polling his colleagues, he promised to include her requests on a future, if not the next, agenda.
