The gloom and doom after the election prompted some to turn to activism. In Boston, a real estate developer with a history of social activism, John Rosenthal, co-founded Stop Handgun Violence with his boyhood friend, Michael Kennedy, whose father, Robert F. Kennedy, had been assassinated.
It was a success born of activism and political bipartisanship, but sadly, Michael Kennedy, co-founder of Stop Handgun Violence, died in a ski accident over the Christmas holidays in 1997 and didnt live to see the legislation signed.