Carolyn McCarthy

April’s horrifying tragedy at Virginia Tech has brought the issue of gun control back to the fore, and longtime gun-control advocate Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) is once again in the media spotlight. Rep. McCarthy’s husband, Dennis, was killed and her son Kevin gravely wounded when a gunman opened fire on a Long Island Railroad commuter train one cold night in December 1993; five others died and nineteen were wounded in this attack. In 1994, McCarthy learned that her then-Congressman Dan Frisa was about to vote to repeal the Assault Weapons Ban, that would have limited access to automatic weapons like that used in the shooting that killed her husband, and it was at that moment she decided to act. McCarthy, who worked as a registered nurse for more than thirty years before her husband’s death, ran for Frisa’s Congressional seat and won; she’s currently serving her sixth term. She has long campaigned to limit guns in this country, and this morning she announced her sponsorship of the NICS Improvement Act, a bill that would make adjustments to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the database used to check potential firearms buyers for any criminal record or history of mental illness. Such a bill might have kept the Virginia Tech gunman from obtaining weapons; if it passes, other senseless shootings could be prevented.

In the face of overwhelming grief, McCarthy turned her energies toward doing something positive, and for the past ten years she’s worked to help people so they might never experience what she has endured. That, we think, is why Carolyn McCarthy is a woman to admire.

To learn more about Rep. McCarthy's work in the House, visit her Congressional website.

A postscript: The NICS Improvement Act was approved by the House on June 13, 2007 and by the Senate on December 19, 2007; it was signed into law by President Bush on January 8, 2008.