Trillion Mom March Has Record Turnout

May 14, 2001

Dissociated Press -- The Trillion Mom March overwhelmed the entire planet this Mother's Day by showing a larger turnout than there are people on the planet. Mary Lou Bleck, group founder, said, "The only explanation we have for having nearly two trillion mothers show support for reasonable gun laws is the fact that a number of extraterrestrial mothers stand with us in our cause."

And stand they did. In the nation's capital, at least three quarter of a billion mothers who've lost someone to gun violence showed up to peacefully and rationally address the issue of gun insanity. Donna Pees-Freely, Grand Imperial Mother for the group, explained the common sense group's position at the podium. "We want everyone to turn in their guns immediately and we call upon all gun manufacturers worldwide to stop making guns immediately. We want all police officers to disarm, and all citizens to render themselves defenseless at once. We also call upon all criminals to 'just say no' to crime."

Their reasonable measures are apparently popular and have achieved wide agreement among even conservative gun owners. The group had over 7,000 public rallies planetwide for their annual Mother's Day event, and so many people turned out they had people linked hand in hand from each site to the next in an interconnected web of solidarity. The human chains caused problems with traffic on roadways worldwide, but the police seemed more than supportive, many of them handing in their guns to the nearest mother in the chain. Officer Dingbat of the D.C. police handed his gun in to local organizer, Mrs. Cakebrain, who retells the story as follows.

"The officer approached us when our human chain from D.C. to Boston stretched out across a local freeway. At first, he was upset that cars were stopped and people honking. But when he saw mothers and fathers and children leaving their cars to join hands with us to help us get our chain out to Boston, his heart opened up and he became the first of now thousands of police officers to hand over his gun. He's currently standing knee-deep in the swamp to the East of D.C. to make sure our Boston chain is unbroken."

The Miami to Baton Rouge chain is having problems -- the swamps some of the protesters are standing in are full of alligators. One dedicated Trillion Mom Marcher lost a leg just minutes after wading into the swamp, but she's still there.  "I'm sad about losing my leg," she tells us, "but this cause is too important to worry about things like that. We need to get this chain over to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to show America and the world how important it is to end gun violence." A fellow marcher, a doctor, tied a makeshift tourniquet onto her stump, and she's showing no signs of weakness. Another marcher quickly fashioned a prosthesis out of a piece of driftwood and attached it to the part of her leg the alligator left in place. 

The chain made it to Atlanta several hours later and required over 920,000 boats to cross the section of the Gulf of Mexico extending between Miami and Louisiana. Heavy steel cables were used to hitch the boats together so the human chain would be unbroken.  The mothers are committed to keeping the chain together for one full year, and most of them are agreeing to fast during that time, to prove they mean business.

Trillion Mom March founder Bleck praised Mrs. Cakebrain's dedication to the group's efforts, from her limousine's cell phone. "That is what I call commitment -- giving up a leg for the cause -- and she's not alone." Mrs. Bleck told us stories of other self-sacrifices among TMM members. One woman watched her daughter get eaten by a lion in the chain from Zimbabwe to South Africa, for example. Said Mrs. Dimbulb of the loss of her child, "if we have to sacrifice a few children to end gun violence, I feel blessed my daughter was one of them. And that lion looked half-starved anyway, so at least the poor thing got to have a meal."