Balance of Power

ago, three more members of our family were murdered with a gun . . .

Dane stared at the screen in wonder. 'This is a mistake. He's making it all about them.'

* * *

    The chamber was hushed, as though muted by an opening so personal in nature. Taut, Lara watched, holding her sister's hand and that of Louis Morgan, knowing that Kerry had written these words himself.

    'Because they were part of our family,' he continued, 'you know their names. As we have mourned, you have mourned with us. And no words of mine will ever match your grace and generosity . . .'

* * *

    Pausing, Kilcannon seemed to gaze straight into Dane's office, and then his voice grew stronger.

    But if this were solely a family tragedy, four senseless deaths separated by thirteen years, I would not have come here.

    I am here because in those thirteen years, almost four hundred thousand other Americans have died from gunfire. Now Kilcannon looked up at the gallery, speaking slowly and respectfully. When Lara's mother, niece and sister died, three more people died with them—Henry Serrano, a devoted husband and father of three; David Walsh, whose wedding would have taken place tomorrow; Laura Blanchard, one day from commencing her sophomore year at Stanford. And on that same day and hour, only a few short blocks from where we are gathered now, Mae Morgan was shot to death by her estranged husband.

    Their families are here with us tonight . . .

* * *

    As Kerry recited their names, each survivor stood to more applause— Felice Serrano and her children; David Walsh's young fiancee; Laura Blanchard's parents, and, beside Lara, Mae Morgan's fourteen-year-old son, Louis. 'I'll do my best,' Kerry had promised them before the speech, and so he would.

    'Mae Morgan,' he went on, 'died as eighty people die every day in this country—mourned by her family, invisible to the media, unknown to the rest of us.' Pausing, Kerry's gaze swept the chamber. 'Why is this? Because the carnage is so great that only the mass slaughter of schoolchildren, or the death of a public figure, ever gives us pause.

    'All of us know that every assassination of an American President was committed with a gun. All of us then living remember our ineradicable grief when John F. Kennedy was murdered. But all too few of us know that since that awful day more Americans have died from gunshot wounds than died in all the wars of the twentieth century, the bloodiest hundred years in world history . . .'

* * *

    Chuck Hampton could hear the passion in Kilcannon's voice, could feel the rapt attention of those who watched.

    'Day after day,' the President told them, 'guns claim ten more children, three more women at the hands of a husband or intimate partner, eighty more people in all.

    'Year after year, this terrible toll of death exceeds by at least ten times that of the next twenty-five industrialized nations combined.' Kilcannon stood straighter, voice filled with anger. 'Only in America, in this city, do surgeons prepare for combat duty by training at an urban hospital . . .'

    'Did you know that?' Hampton whispered to Vic Coletti. Silent, Coletti shook his head.

    'Only in America,' Kilcannon said with sudden softness, 'do we protect the right to sell bullets designed to tear apart the internal organs of their victim—in the case of our family, of Lara's six-year-old niece, Marie.

    'What causes this? Are Americans less humane than the Japanese, or Australians, or the Swedes? Do we truly believe that the random slaughter of the innocent is part and parcel of the right to own a gun? Or that the death of a Mae Morgan is the price that we must pay?

    'It is not.' Now Kilcannon's voice resonated with moral urgency. 'It is the price of our collective failure to pass laws to keep criminals and drug addicts and spousal abusers from taking the lives of women like Mae Morgan, or children like Marie . . .'

    Led by Senator Chuck Hampton, the Democrats stood to applaud.

* * *

    In Clayton's office, he and Kit watched instant polling, transmitted by closed circuit, appear beneath the President's face. Moment by moment, his approval numbers rose.

    'Seventy-one percent,' Kit murmured.

* * *

    Watching, Lara's throat constricted. 'What,' Kerry called out, 'do those companies who sell these weapons— and design these bullets—say to the death of Marie Bowden?

    ' 'We didn't know her father.

' 'We didn't ask him to slaughter his family.

    ' 'All that decency requires of us is to express our sympathy—yet again—and say that we should punish the perpetrators after they've misused a gun.' '

    Once more, Kerry's voice grew quieter. 'Well, John Bowden is not alive to punish. And even if he were, and then we took his life, it would not resurrect the six other lives he took.

    'Our only chance to save those lives was to deny this man a gun which could murder seven people in less than seven seconds . . .'

    Yes, Lara silently told her husband. This is good.

* * *

    'Those who would keep things as they are,' the President continued, 'tell us we only need to 'enforce existing laws.' So let us consider that.

    'Under 'existing law,' we took away John Bowden's gun at the time of his arrest.

    'Under 'existing law,' we entered his name into a computer, so that he could not buy another gun from a federally licensed dealer.' Once more, Kilcannon's voice was etched with irony. 'And so—under 'existing law'—John Bowden flew to Las Vegas and bought a gun and a magazine which could hold forty Eagle's Claw bullets.

    'Under 'existing law,' 'private sellers' at gun shows don't have to run background checks before they sell a gun.

    'Under 'existing law,' the provisions limiting gun magazines to ten bullets don't apply to those manufactured before the law was passed.' Yet again, Kerry's voice softened. 'Under 'existing law,' the eleventh bullet from her father's gun murdered Marie Bowden . . .'

    At this, Fasano turned to Harshman. 'You'd better have an answer,' he said under his breath.

    'How,' Kilcannon asked, 'did Bowden come to buy this gun? Because he read two advertisements in The Defender magazine.

    'The first warned that the Lexington P-2 was an endangered species, 'banned in California.' ' Briefly, Kilcannon shook his head in wonder. 'And just in case John Bowden would not know where else to buy one, The Defender placed it next to an advertisement for a gun show in Las Vegas, featuring the Lexington P- 2.'

* * *

'They can't read a dead man's mind,' Bill Campton said to Dane. 'No one can