Mother Channels Her Grief, Anger Into Crusade Against Gun Violence : Thousand Oaks: Her son was left paralyzed in an accidental shooting. Now she speaks out against proliferation of small-caliber handguns.

The slug that had cut within three inches of her fifth-grader’s spine plinked onto the operating table with a flick of a scalpel.

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One bullet, one accidental shooting, one paralyzed child--the nightmare taunts Glenda Lee-Barnard each time she sees her son pound his shriveled legs in anguish, each time she thinks of kitchen-table gun dealers parceling out pistols that could fit in a baby’s palm.

“I can’t turn away from this possibly happening to other mothers and other sons,” said Lee-Barnard, 47, a Thousand Oaks woman who has channeled her grief and anger into an unrelenting crusade to curb gun violence against children.

Her 16-year-old son, David Lee, a blond, blue-eyed freshman who turns girls’ heads at Thousand Oaks High School, has been confined to a wheelchair since his stepbrother accidentally shot him Sept. 22, 1990, at his father’s home in Claremont.

The .38-caliber handgun, ironically, had been purchased for protection by his stepmother, who had nearly been raped when she lived in Arizona.

“That’s so typical of what happens,” Lee-Barnard said, “a gun that’s been purchased for protection ends up victimizing a child.”

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Although raised as a Southern “lady” in Alabama--where a gentlewoman refrains from the tumble of politics--the stately mother of two has put herself into the breach to lobby successfully for two new state laws that help protect children from guns. One makes adults responsible when children are injured by guns that are within easy reach, as was the case with her son. Another requires safety training for anyone who buys a gun.

Last week, Lee-Barnard testified against the proliferation of locally made small-caliber handguns, or so-called Saturday Night Specials, at a state legislative hearing in Los Angeles.

She also released a 400-page report that she and two colleagues compiled, using Los Angeles Police Department statistics, that shows these guns to be the weapon of choice among gang members and other criminals from 1990 to 1991 in Southern California.

“Her testimony was tremendously compelling,” said state Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), who chaired the select committee on gun violence. “She really put a human face on how personally devastating gun violence can be.”

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Steeling herself against the horror, Lee-Barnard waited until her townhouse was empty one day after the shooting and listened to the 911 tape of her son moments after the accident. The bullet had passed through his right biceps, entered his chest under the armpit and come to a rest just under the skin on his back.

In the background, as his astonished stepbrother told the 911 dispatcher what he had just done, the 12-year-old David could be heard crying out, his voice coming through on the recording with almost cruel clarity, “I want my mother. I want my mother.”

In that instant, she began screaming in pain, she recalled.

“It was the most heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever heard before,” she added, her voice choking. “I (felt I) was there where David was. . . . It was the place I had to be. I had to be with David.”

Reluctantly, Lee-Barnard has played this tape to audiences to win support for her drive to limit some types of small-caliber firearms and to encourage the safe usage of others. A television reporter welled up with tears after hearing the tape, she said, while an editor who was present “sat down and sobbed.”

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Articulate, fiercely determined to reconcile her family to the tragedy, Lee-Barnard threw herself into writing letters after her son’s shooting and ended up forming a friendship with Sarah Brady. Her husband, James Brady, is the former White House press secretary who was paralyzed in 1981 by an attempted assassin’s bullet meant for President Ronald Reagan in Washington.

“She’s just tackled this thing like there’s no tomorrow,” said Sarah Brady, chairwoman for Handgun Control Inc., which she helped found after her husband’s injury. “A lot of women who have lost someone have contacted us, asking what they can do. But Glenda’s really much more serious than most of the others.”

While growing up on a 300-acre cotton and sugar cane farm in Alabama, Lee-Barnard grew familiar with guns because her father and brothers hunted deer and other game for food.

She said she supports the right to own a firearm, including handguns, but added, “The right to bear arms does not supersede the right for a child to have a healthy body. That shines above any one’s right to bear arms. I will always, always stand behind that. Right now, it’s guns that are killing our children. It’s not cars any longer. It’s guns.”

What further troubles Lee-Barnard is the lack of regulation of handgun manufacturers, particularly of the Saturday Night Specials.

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“There’s more regulation for manufacturers of teddy bears than there are on guns,” she said. “I would be very pleased if there was a recall of Saturday Night Specials.”

Small and therefore easily concealed, cheap and therefore easily discarded, these guns are made for only one reason: crime, she said.

She added that they are sold by dealers who operate out of the trunks of their cars, their garages or places of business--peddling guns that are so poorly made that they can be almost as dangerous to their users as to their targets.

As much as 80% of these small-caliber guns, which can cost as little as $13 apiece to make, are manufactured by seven firms in Southern California, according to a study cited by Assemblyman Caldera.

Lee-Barnard, who divorced David’s father when the boy was a baby, has lived with her second husband, Robert, a missile engineer, and their daughter, 8-year-old Stephanie, on the same tree-lined street in Thousand Oaks for about eight years. They installed a ramp down the three steps that lead from their entry hall for their son, who is paralyzed from the mid-chest down.

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The boy’s dog, a golden retriever named Wendy, helps him pick up things from the floor, turn on the lights, open doors and even pick up the telephone, he said. The dog also has helped him at school.

David, who sometimes joins his mother in her meetings with lawmakers and schoolchildren, says the campaign is not about banning handguns. “She just wants regulations that will prevent accidents . . . like what happen to me,” he said.

A former elementary school teacher, Lee-Barnard said she has been working with school districts in Ventura County to implement gun safety programs for children and guide them in ways other than violence to resolve arguments.

She has visited the crime-plagued inner cities and said, “Those children remind me of the kids that I saw on the streets of Northern Ireland. They’re desensitized. They expect to die.

“They all have had family members killed. All have had relatives killed, and they’re accepting it. We should be ashamed of that, especially as adults, because we’re supposed to be taking care of them.”