'We're not just playing bingo.' Des Moines grandmas to march in solidarity with Parkland students over guns

These eight women are armed with the most powerful and effective weapons: Wisdom, grit and fearlessness earned through decades of experience.

NRA, eat your heart out. You can't just walk into a gun show and buy what they're packing, with or without a permit or effective background checks.

All of the women are neighbors in the Scottish Rite Park retirement high rise that pokes above the trees along Woodland Avenue in the heart of Des Moines.

They’re mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers ranging in age from 60 to 90 who were rattled by last month’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

They were so disgusted by the fact that 17 people were gunned down in the hallways, on top of other recent shootings, that they’re standing up to support Emma Gonzalez and her fellow Florida students who are headed to a march this weekend in Washington, D.C.

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When word began to spread of nationwide March for Our Lives rallies to be held Saturday, March 24, these women resolved to act.

“Our brains haven’t retired,” said Pat Peterson. “And our passions about life — we haven’t put that aside.

"We’re not just playing bingo."

So they will gather at 10 a.m. Saturday at Scottish Rite with as many of their neighbors as are willing to join them. Weather-permitting, they will shuffle outdoors — some with walkers or wheelchairs if necessary — to gather around the giant circle fountain in front of the 13-story complex.

(Holding the rally in front of Scottish Rite will allow more residents to participate without having to navigate a single perilous step. But if any want to join the larger public march at 2 p.m. at the State Capitol, there will be plenty of time to make it.)

Never mind that the fountain is bone dry, the only blue being its painted concrete bottom. At least officially it will be spring.

The women will read the words of children’s activist Marian Wright Edelman. They will speak into borrowed bullhorns.

They will tote homemade signs emblazoned with slogans such as “Save our children” and “No guns in schools.” They will hold up small blaze-orange note cards printed with a single word: “Enough.”

Empty shoes will be arranged around the fountain to symbolize some of the deadliest school shootings since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado that had everybody flinching at the sight of any sullen teen in a trench coat.

As if trench coats, not guns, were the key problem, right?

Yet another school shooting erupted Tuesday morning in Maryland.

These women have accomplished much throughout their lives. They include a teacher, a chaplain, a public health nurse, a real estate agent.

In their day they were student activists who grew up to work with the likes of Planned Parenthood or the League of Women Voters.

Parkland awoke in them a collective sense that now, finally, it was time for them to set a more visible example as elders. They watched Sunday's “60 Minutes” interview with the Parkland students and began to think back to the social turmoil and protest in their own youth, especially the Civil Rights Era.

“It was young people that sat at the lunch counters in the '50s,” said Sue Flemr.

They don't consider this a partisan cause. Conservative bona fides also are tucked among their various resumes.

“We're just the lippy ones, I guess,” said Louise Moon.

Kay Kopatich, like all of these women, is no shrinking violet. She spent 17 years as chaplain to the female prison population in Mitchellville.

Flemr worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket in the 1960s in Chicago. (The movement focused protests on industries and businesses that underemployed or underpaid African-American workers.)

She sincerely believed that she could make a difference — one more reason she empathizes with the inflamed activist hearts of the Parkland students.

Peterson was in Greensboro, N.C., during the student sit-ins there. Judy Olson was a college student in South Dakota who campaigned for the rights for American Indians.

So on one hand, these women who have lived through generations of war and riots and Watergate and the rest fully realize that struggle and violence are not 21st century phenomena. Kopatich even mused how she “quickly forgot the violence that occurred” in the '60s.

“It’s like childbirth,” Olson quipped, as laughter began rippling through the group. “You forget the pain.”

“And you go and do it again,” Flemr said for the final punchline.

These ladies are good at finishing each other's sentences.

For example, Flemr’s twin boys were born in July 1968 in the middle of the tumultuous year marked by the assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy and riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

She remembers cradling her infants in her arms and promising to them that, although they never would get to meet King, she was going to teach them all about him and what had happened.

“It might be time for a revival of ‘All in the Family,’” said Olson, referring to Norman Lear’s landmark '70s sitcom that confronted contemporary social upheaval with savvy humor in prime time TV.

I’ve written before about how I grew up on a farm with shotguns. I’ve never been a hunter, but I recognize a need for guns, particularly in rural America.

But I’ve long since stopped believing that private arsenals are going to thwart the government’s black helicopters from swooping in if you think the 2nd Amendment is what's protecting you from a hostile takeover by the "Deep State."

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The right to vote, access public information and maintain a strong free press are the best possible ammo to combat the government overreach that gives paranoid preppers nightmares.

Sadly, too many Americans ignore or even actively work against these rights, at their peril. Maybe because they don't provide the same sort of macho rush as squeezing a trigger.

But by the time you’re sitting around a table with your neighbors in an assisted living complex, if you're not already there, which do you think you'll care more about: Your right to vote and know what's really going on, or your right to fire a gun?

The mere fact that we’re debating whether to arm teachers shows how ludicrous this debate has become, and why we need the Parkland students.

“Why is it that our young people have to notice before anything happens?” as one of the Scottish Rite ladies put it.

I asked them what they would say to the Parkland students directly if given the chance:

“Keep it up.”

“I am so proud of you.”

“Our generation has messed things up, so you’ve got to do it.”

“I believe in you, and you’re going to do it.”

All their responses gave me a lump in my throat. But I wondered, considering that they have the benefit of experience and seeing so much of our cyclical struggles and arguments, can they really hold out hope for meaningful change?

“We wouldn’t even be doing this if we didn’t have any hope,” said Judy Haines.

That gave me another lump in my throat.

If the Parkland students and the Scottish Rite ladies are on the same page, 1,500 miles and generations apart, maybe this really is the tipping point in the gun debate.

Another thing about the weapons that these women wield: They cannot be disarmed.

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/KyleMunson. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@KyleMunson).