Watts: 'One tough mothers' relentless in quest for gun sense

[SecularMotion]

The day after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., I started a Facebook page aimed at uniting American mothers in a fight against gun violence. Married and living in suburban Indianapolis, I was a stay-at-home mom of five and not in any way political, aside from voting. But I'd seen the difference the women of MADD made around drunken driving. Why, I wondered, couldn't we do the same?

I was wholly unprepared for the blowback headed my way.

Within hours of speaking out about our nation's lax gun laws, I received my first threats of sexual violence and death. Over the next several months, my phone throbbed with angry texts and phone calls, often in the middle of the night. My fledgling Twitter feed - which I didn't really know how to use yet - was on fire. I started getting letters mailed to my home, complete with cut-outs from magazines to spell out threats to my life.

My email was hacked; my Facebook photos were downloaded and distributed publicly; my phone number and home address were shared online; my children's social media accounts were hacked and the names of their schools shared online.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Watts-One-tough-mothers-relentless-in-quest-7396262.php

[beevul]

1. I bet people that try to go after free speech get a lot of that too.

I was wholly unprepared for the blowback headed my way.

Within hours of speaking out about our nation's lax gun laws, I received my first threats of sexual violence and death. Over the next several months, my phone throbbed with angry texts and phone calls, often in the middle of the night. My fledgling Twitter feed - which I didn't really know how to use yet - was on fire. I started getting letters mailed to my home, complete with cut-outs from magazines to spell out threats to my life.

My email was hacked; my Facebook photos were downloaded and distributed publicly; my phone number and home address were shared online; my children's social media accounts were hacked and the names of their schools shared online.

I bet people that try to go after free speech get a lot of that too.

[sarisataka]

2. Sorry, not going to subscribe

To read a two year old fan fiction piece.

[Press Virginia]

3. So she hired a man with a gun to protect her while she worked to make it

harder for law abiding people, who couldn't hire security, to get a gun

[flamin lib]

4. Yeah, with good reason because so many 'law abiding' gun owners sent death threats. nt

[sarisataka]

5. So why should a woman

Who is receiving death threats from an abusive ex, a person much more likely to carry out such threats than Anonymous internet posters, be denied the same option of protection?

Is it because, as one GCRA host put it, her fault for "making poor choices in partners"? Or is it simply that billionaires and former Monsanto executives are more important than working women in New Jersey?

[Press Virginia]

6. Your assumption of who sent what doesn't

change the fact that she decided a man with a gun was the way to protect herself.

Why does she have an irrational fear of words?

[Eleanors38]

7. It does sound like a good reason, and she has the right and money to act on her fears.

Everyone else should have that right, though many have to find their own arms as a pro bodyguard is for the wealthy.

In reality, gun control is for the common people -- it's Never for elites.