By John Burton
RED BANK — Brett Sabo wanted to make one thing clear when she sat down to talk about her involvement with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
“We’re not against the Second Amendment,” she stressed, explaining the group doesn’t oppose legal gun ownership.
“What we would like to see,” she continued, is universal background checks and the closing of some existing legal loopholes that allows gun purchasers to circumvent that requirement, as well as preventing those on the federal terrorist watch list and no-fly list from being able to readily access firearms.
“It’s really just too easy for dangerous people to get them (guns),” she said.
Sabo, a former English and theater teacher, lives in Red Bank with her husband, James, and 10-year-old son Evan. She and Evan attended the candlelight vigil borough officials held on June 15 in response to the Orlando shooting that resulted in 49 gun deaths and about another 50 wounded, presenting Mayor Pasquale Menna with a T-shirt for Sabo’s organization.
She used to teach in Harlem, New York, and her husband retired from teaching in the Bronx.
But it was the San Bernardino, California, terrorist mass shooting where 14 people were killed and 22 others seriously wounded last December, when she decided she had to do something.
“I remember watching the news coverage,” of that horrific event, after so many other similar horrific events, she noted, remembering hearing a parent, Richard Martinez, speak about his child, one of the victims. “I remember feeling very lucky,” that no friend or family member had been involved in one of these terrible incidents. “But I thought it was only a matter of time before someone I knew would be affected.
“And I wanted to get involved.”
And that led her to join the national Moms Demand Action group, where she now serves as campaign lead for the New Jersey chapter.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America now counts about 3.5 million members across the country, with more than 1,000 in New Jersey. “There is strength in numbers,” she said.
Stay-at-home mom Shannon Watts founded the group in the immediate aftermath of the ghastly December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, in Newtown, Connecticut.
The group used as a model Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), organizing grassroots efforts to effect political change from government, educational institutions and businesses to bring about what they call common sense gun reforms. Since 2013 the organization joined forces with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group that benefited from Bloomberg’s media reach and financial support.
What deeply affected Sabo after the Sandy Hook shooting was, “If kids weren’t safe in their classrooms,” she explained, “they weren’t safe anywhere.”
There is a new normal that has affected her personally. Recently a parent invited Sabo’s son to her home to play with her child. That prompted Sabo to ask as a precaution if there were guns in the home and if they were secure. “It’s always in my thoughts now,” she said.
Currently about 90 Americans a day are killed by guns, she said.
As a local representative for the organization Sabo testified before the state Legislature in Trenton in support of a bill that would have toughened the law requiring those convicted of domestic violence to relinquish any guns they own, which was a moment of pride for her, voicing the organization’s point of view.
After watching the U.S. Senate’s vote this week on four gun measures in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, with none passing, she said, “We were disappointed but not surprised.”
But there is something positive to take away from it. It took Congress four months to take any action. Now it took four days, progress of a sort, she said.
Besides, “It really told us where our senators stand,” Sabo noted, “and tells us what we need to do come November.”
