"The founder of the Civic Disarmament Committee (CDC) of Chicago interpreted the US gun problem in light of her experience working for nuclear peace and universal human security in the early Cold War. As the spouse of Enrico Fermi, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who conducted the first successful experiments in nuclear fission at the University of Chicago in 1942. Laura Fermi had witnessed the birth of a new global order. Like Enrico and many of the scientists who contributed to the Manhattan Project, Laura Fermi became active in the nuclear peace movement after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fermi learned to organize activists first in the peace movement and then, beginning in 1959, as a local environmentalist, years before the cause gained national attention. ... At the end of the 1960s she turned toward disarming civilian populations and abolishing handguns, reasoning that disarmament was as feasible for American citizens as limiting nuclear proliferation had been among nation-states. Others working in nascent gun control groups marveled at her incomparable wit and humor and her tireless passion for peace. She liked to tease audiences that they should "never underestimate the power of little old ladies in tennis shoes.""