The U.S. Congress will lose its “gun lady” next month, but after 18 years in what Rep. Carolyn McCarthy called “a fun ride,” the former Mineola nurse feels she left little or nothing on the table. Her term ends on Jan. 3, 2015.
“You tend to forget about all the accomplishments over the years,” she said in an interview with the Mineola American. “I had 15 pieces of legislation signed by [three presidents]. I guess I did okay.”
McCarthy did not seek re-election this past November after announcing she was battling lung cancer. Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice beat out former Nassau County Legislator Bruce Blakeman for McCarthy’s 4th Congressional District seat.
“I’m very comfortable [with Rice],” McCarthy said. “I sat down and talked to her after her election. She and I worked together for many years in the schools on bullying, gun violence, drugs.”
McCarthy, 70, called herself a “person of fate,” when it came to her decision to run for office. The tragic 21st anniversary of the 1993 Colin Ferguson shootings on the Long Island Rail Road, which claimed the life of her husband Dennis, sticks with McCarthy to this day. Her son Kevin was wounded in the crossfire.
“Do I wish it never did happen? Of course,” she said. “There’s so many people that a tragedy has happened in their lives yet they took that tragedy and went forward to become activists. If I hadn’t tried, I would never know.”
As far as stricter gun legislation, McCarthy feels it’s a matter of time and effort on the part of advocates.
“People want background checks,” she said. “They want to make sure the mentally ill don’t get guns. If it gets in the state level, it’ll work on the federal level.”
With the two-year anniversary of the Newtown, CT shootings, which saw Adam Lanza kill 20 students and six adults in Sandy Hook Elementary School, McCarthy feels more measures need to be taken at the local level to combat gun violence.
“These kind of massacres, they’re going into places nobody would ever think they would happen,” McCarthy said.
Jonathan Jackson, director of The Center for Psychological Services in the Derner Institute at Adelphi University, feels on the school level, the main concern is safety.
“School attacks are extremely rare events,” he said. “They get talked about at length in media but they’re rare and unlikely to happen. That needs to be emphasized to kids.”
On McCarthy, Jackson said “she fought a valiant fight.”
“It’s an issue that got as close to her as anybody,” he said. “It’s understandable that it would become a primary issue for her. She’s going to have to turn that over to her colleagues.”
McCarthy already pointed her successor Rice in the gun violence direction. She tapped Congressman Mike Thompson in November to bring Rice on the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.
“I know there was a waiting list for people to get on,” she said. “Kathleen will be a perfect fit for it.”
