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Gun violence spurred mothers to action
Wanda Lavendel Bincer and Jeri Bonavia got caught up in criminal justice issues by way of their respective daughters, though the circumstances were quite different.
Bincer, who died last Thursday, co-founded the local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children in the mid-1980s after her 25-year-old daughter, Yvonne, was murdered in 1983 in Atlanta.
Bonavia founded the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort in 1995 after her then 5-year-old daughter issued a plaintive request: "So many kids are being killed by guns," Bonavia recalls her daughter saying. "Fix it."
"I just couldn't shake the fact that when I was 5 I was worried about getting a Barbie doll," Bonavia says.
Bincer, a psychiatrist, concentrated on helping the victims of violent crimes heal from the trauma, but was also vocal about the need for gun regulation. In a May 28, 2001, letter published in The New York Times, she criticized then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's alliance with pro-gun groups and questioned whether a move was underfoot in the Justice Department to undermine gun control efforts.
"As a citizen, a physician and a mother whose daughter was shot execution-style, I firmly believe that enforcement of strict gun laws would save lives," she wrote.
Friends say Bincer would likely not have been pleased with last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the District of Columbia's ban on the private ownership of handguns. The ruling established the Second Amendment's right to bear and keep arms as an individual, rather than a collective, constitutional right.
"If someone wants a gun for hunting, fine, let them have it," says Hank Starkey, who, with his wife, succeeded Bincer as head of the local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children. "But to have handguns for protection against your own citizens, there has to be another way. No other civilized country in the world allows their citizens to have handguns like the United States does. And Wanda probably would have said the same thing. To this day, they never found the person who killed her daughter."
A man using a stolen handgun murdered Starkey's son, Mark, in Madison in 1990. A highway patrol officer had earlier stopped the man but, not knowing the gun was stolen, only required him to purchase a holster for it.
Starkey says Bincer called him on the phone soon after his son was killed and invited him and his wife to the monthly meeting of Parents of Murdered Children, which to this day is still held at Meriter Hospital.
"I hung up the phone and said to my wife, 'Can you believe there's a support group for parents of murdered children?"
Starkey and his wife accepted the invitation.
"We were so warmly accepted and received by Wanda," Starkey recalls.
He says Bincer helped countless parents in similar straits.
"She was just a very sympathetic ear to our situation and anybody else who wanted to call and talk about their situation in life," he says. "Wanda was more than willing to take her time away from her profession. Being a psychiatrist, she was able to help people too."
Bincer also helped local law enforcement become more sensitive to the needs of crime victims, including assisting Gillian Nevers in getting the Dane County District Attorney Office's victim-witness unit off the ground. Bincer also worked on the first-ever state bill of rights for crime victims and served on the Wisconsin Crime Victims Council and the national board of Parents of Murdered Children.
Nevers, the first director of the district attorney's crime victims unit, says Bincer was an extremely effective and credible advocate for crime victims.
"She had a purpose for being there and she was very clear what that was," Nevers says.
Gov. Jim Doyle, who was the Dane County district attorney when the crime victims unit began, said in a prepared statement that Bincer worked tirelessly for victims' rights.
"Her life is a testament to our capacity for perseverance, hope and compassion," he said. "She showed us that no matter what darkness settles around us, all is not lost. Wanda always saw the possibilities for good and she spent her life helping and caring for those in the most harrowing circumstances."
BONAVIA says she was "happily" working as a playwright when, prompted by her young daughter, she started researching gun violence in the United States.
"I did a lot of research and realized no other industrialized country tolerates anywhere near the level of gun violence we have in our country," she says.
At the time, the number of gun deaths in the country was peaking at about 38,000 a year, Bonavia says. It's now closer to 30,000.
But don't mistake Bonavia for someone who wants an outright ban on all guns.
"I come from a gun-owning family," she says. "My dad was a cowboy. He drove cattle out west. I would be disowned if I were suggesting things truly offensive to gun owners."
She says she doesn't see last week's Supreme Court ruling as having much impact in Wisconsin since the state adopted an amendment to the state constitution in 1998 that already specifies gun ownership as an individual right.
"Any laws we had here would have already been scrutinized with this in mind," says Bonavia, whose group has become the leading voice against gun violence in Wisconsin over the past decade.
She says the state's ban on concealed weapons -- which restricts the carrying of concealed weapons to one's home or business -- has been tested a couple of times since the amendment was adopted and has so far withstood the challenge. But legislative attempts to change Wisconsin's concealed carry law have kept Bonavia and her group busy.
Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling on the Washington, D.C., handgun ban was released, Bonavia issued a news release saying her group's pursuit of "crime-fighting, life-saving regulations" would not be hampered. She also said she was "hopeful" the ruling would "depolarize the gun debate" by eliminating the gun lobby's fear that efforts to prevent gun violence would lead to a total ban on guns.
Yet, just a few days later, Bonavia was back-pedaling after listening to gun advocates say they intended to challenge local gun ordinances in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
"I guess I was a bit more hopeful than I should have been," she says. "Which is really disappointing. It shouldn't be this polarizing."
Bonavia says, for instance, there is widespread support in Wisconsin for requiring criminal background checks for anyone intending to purchase a gun. A statewide survey last year, the joint effort of a liberal and conservative polling firm, found that 80 percent of Wisconsin residents support this regulatory change, including 7 out of 10 gun owners. The gun lobby, says Bonavia, has nevertheless successfully fought the proposal each time.
Bonavia is now preparing to support a yet-to-be-introduced bill by Rep. Leon Young, D-Milwaukee, that would require "microstamping" technology in all new semiautomatic handguns other than revolvers sold in the state.
This would provide a new tool for law enforcement because the mechanism would mark each cartridge with the make, model and serial number of the gun that fires it, say advocates. California is the only state that currently has such a requirement.
"It's a significant change in what we currently have available in terms of law enforcement," Bonavia says.
Young says the bill will be his "first priority" when the Legislature reconvenes in January.
Bonavia's daughter, by the way, who will start her second year this fall at University of Wisconsin-Madison, remains a gun control advocate.
This past spring, at a ceremony at the state Capitol marking the 1-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, Jenna
Bonavia spoke in favor of strict gun control laws in order to have a safe campus.
"Students are an imperfect breed, we are constantly learning and adjusting," she said, "and to do this we need to live in a community where we all feel safe."
