THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 16, 1997 TAG: 9702150021
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: Margaret Edds
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 83 lines
The volume is thick as a phone book and appropriately covered in red. ``Only in Virginia - 1996,'' the title reads, calling to mind the state's proud promotional slogan, ``Made in Virginia.''
But the handiwork recorded in this fresh-off-the-copying-machine document is no cause for civic pride. The 200-page compilation is of 1996 Virginia newspaper clippings that feature guns and bloodshed. The sampling of Virginia murders, woundings, accidents and suicides is representative but incomplete.
Pages contain up to five clippings each, gathered by volunteers across the state. Virginians Against Handgun Violence oversaw the project. The League of Women Voters helped. The Center to Prevent Handgun Violence in Washington contributed. It is a chilling work.
``When it was clear last year that we were going to have absolutely nothing (in terms of gun-control legislation), it occurred to me that if you could clip all the events involving bloodshed by firearms, not the burglaries or the robberies, it might make an impression,'' said Patty Masterson, a retired Norfolk Academy English teacher who conceived the volume and last week helped distribute it around Capitol Square.
She was right. The page-after-page drumbeat of tragedy is first startling, then compelling, then exhausting. One of the women who provided clippings from the Richmond area recently quit. It was too disspiriting an exercise, she said.
This is the sixth winter since Masterson, then newly retired from the classroom, adopted the cause of handgun control and moved from Virginia Beach to a Richmond hotel room for a two-month vigil. As a volunteer lobbyist for Virginians Against Handgun Violence, she has become a fixture in legislative halls, brightening committee rooms with her white hair, knit sweaters and welcoming smile.
In this role, Masterson has brought to bear all the skills that have sustained her through an adventurous 74 years - creativity, passion, good sense. The combination helped make her one of the first female attorneys in South Carolina, a Navy wife and enthusiastic mother of five, a popular teacher for 35 years and the force behind a series of seminars on how children learn.
But those characteristics have yet to penetrate the mass consciousness in the Virginia General Assembly. Masterson's most thrilling moments in Richmond were among her first. In the 1992 session, with then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder leading the charge, lawmakers limited over-the-counter handgun sales to one per person per month.
``We did nothing to create it,'' Masterson said recently of the law, ``but we had the fun of surfing in with it.'' Since then, Masterson and her gun-control colleagues have learned both the importance of having a governor in your corner and the frustration of going up against a lobby as entrenched as the National Rifle Association. Last year, all of the major legislation they supported died. This year, two of the three bills Masterson cared most about were not even heard in committee.
Her response, like a schoolmarm with a class of sluggards, has been to search for new ways to make lawmakers sit up and take notice. ``Only in Virginia'' is one result. Masterson believes anyone who takes time to peruse its headlines - ``Father Shot on Way Home,'' ``Boy, 5, Shoots Mother with Father's Rifle,'' ```My Only Son,' Mother says after Slaying,'' - must be moved to act.
Her commitment does not blind her to the limitations of gun control. ``Even if the sale of handguns to civilians were stopped here and now, we'd still have problems because of the millions of handguns out there,'' Masterson acknowledged. But she also recognizes the consequences of inaction. ``It can only get worse if we do nothing.''
Not surprisingly, the shootings that Masterson most deplores are those involving domestic violence and children who accidentially set off guns. Such deaths or woundings ``seem so unnecessary,'' she said. ``To me, they are products of a proliferation of handguns.''
At a minimum, she believes, gun sales should be limited to storefront transactions or - with private sales - to law-enforcement offices; purchasers should be required to take gun-safety courses, and trigger-locks should be required on guns.
As a student of human development, she also believes that society should do much more to guard against the eruption of violence. Gun-control advocates are ``dealing with the tippity, tippity, tip of the iceberg,'' she said. Those working with preschool education and domestic relationships are closer to the core of the problem.
Legislative victories or no, what keeps her going is ``a passion for living, for learning, learning, learning,'' she said. It's an attitude that qualifies Masterson as a state treasure, Made In Virginia. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.