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Americans are a forward looking people-those who were not born here but who live and work among us frequently comment on our national emphasis on not just the future, but a better future. It is, I hope, this forward-looking, optimistic approach that will once more be America's salvation-whether that phrase conjures the WWII Rosie the Riverter poster with its "We Can Do It!" slogan or something more refined. All of Women & Guns is at all times concerned with survival; self-defense, and its corollary, self-reliance, are at the core of its existence. While we try to cover all aspects of gunownership-the fun as well as the serious, whenever we poll our readers, self-defense is your primary concern. When I talk to people who are not gunowners, but who are curious about it, whether the person is a reporter, long-time friend, hairdresser or seat mate on an airplane, I have always sensed a sort of sheepish acknowledgement on the person's part that perhaps self-defense is something about which they should be thinking. In much the same way people are forever thinking about cutting their cholesterol or remembering to vote in off-year elections. Not everyone who asks about the topic is prepared to take my word for it, and that's fine. Not everyone who does bring up the subject and who later begins the journey to self-reliance, will become a gunowner. And that's fine, too. But we have a responsibility as gunowners, especially as women gunowners, to talk to others about what we've learned and what we believe. In current events parlance, perhaps its time to throw off the burka of our own defensiveness and let people see who and what we are. After a dozen plus years at W&G and-gulp!-20 years total in this game, it seems to me our biggest single failing has been our inability and our reluctance, and sometimes our fear, of telling others that we are self-reliant, we are prepared to survive and we have mastered the means to do so. It is not some Freudian objectification of their equipment that makes people now admire police, rescue workers, soldiers and fire fighters-it is our admiration of their determination AND their skills. Although, for example, there has been some hand-wringing on Capitol Hill, the editorial pages and the elite salons about whether to arm commercial pilots, most people know it for the hooey it is. Most of us reason it out this way: pilots are trained professionals (many with military backgrounds), pilots are trusted with the lives of their fellow crew members, with literally millions of dollars worth of equipment, oh, and yes, with the lives of their passengers. A+B+C=sure, we trust them with a gun as a line of last defense. This same reasoning-intuitive to most people-is the same reasoning that will cause the majority of Americans who will never be gunowners to approve of private, civilian gun ownership. The reasoning is the same. Sue Smith lives in my neighborhood, goes to work, pays taxes, shovels her walk, takes in the mail when I'm on vacation, cleans up after her dog, etc. These everyday acts are what make a community and what foster trust. Most people probably never had any problem with "Sue Smith" being a gunowner, and, I dare say, are even less likely to object post-9/11. The professional anti-gunners, the lobbyists of fear and distrust-like Sarah Brady and Josh Sugarmann-are having a tough time getting much traction on their issue-civilian disarmament-these days. Even prior to September 2001, it was pretty clear the majority of Americans were not in the mood for their nonsense. The Brady Campaign (the newly spun name of Handgun Control Inc, which even their own consultants admitted was a loser), had to take the so-called Million Mom March under its fiscal wing. Then they had to lay off half their staff. Sugarmann's Violence Policy Center (which though solely concerned with civilian disarmament was always wise enough to keep the words "gun" and "control" out of their name) has been similarly stymied. The VPC has never much cared about individual donations, trolling successfully for dollars in the leather-chaired boardrooms of charitable foundations. But, they, too, are feeling the dollar pinch, I'm sure, as trustees wonder if the money in their now-devalued investment accounts couldn't be spent better with the Salvation Army or Twin Towers Fund or some other general purpose public charity where fund-raising is also down. The VPC has also always been most interested in itself and has of late more publicly turned on its fellow travelers, claiming to be the only group truly interested in a total ban of handguns. To those of us who have been around the politics of guns for a long time, it's actually kind of fun to see this type of infighting on the other side and to see the media, however gingerly, take note of it. In the world we live in now, it's interesting to see ploy after ploy on the anti-gun side fall by the roadside (that's the roadside that if an idea falls by and the media doesn't hear it, or chooses to ignore it, doesn't exists). "Don't panic," said the antis, after Sept. 11, and no one disagreed. But when they added, "and don't buy a gun," no one, not even their friends in the media or in legislatures, seemed very interested. And, their insistence that America's gunowners, their representatives and the firearms industry were somehow profiteering, or, in their most favorite locution, scaring people into buying guns, was also falling on deaf ears. "Gun shows as 'arms bazaars'" was one feint they tried, and, while there is some juice in the gun show issue, the glass remained half empty. Tom Diaz, the VPC's "industry expert" (author of the inexpert and inaccurate Making a Killing), next tried to tie the .50 caliber scare (which the antis have concocted in the same way they made the "cop killer bullet" issue up 20 years ago) to terrorism. The VPC claimed that Osama bin Laden bought some of the guns from a US manufacturer, Barrett Arms. That got them some ink, but the company's president, Ronnie Barrett, was able to remind the media, if not the VPC, about all of the federal checks and balances in arms manufacturing that show pretty clearly that no such thing had ever happened. Reaching into the closet at year's end, Sugarmann dusted off the VPC's nearly annual "report" on the dangers of firearms to women and drifted it out into MediaWorld. It got a little play, but every year the media grows less interested in it, in much the same way people tire of Aunt Tillie's fruitcake year after year. This is a tough time for the country. There are dangers still out there. And, we should have concerns about incursions on all of our civil liberties, not just our firearms civil rights. But there are opportunities to reach out to the rest of our
neighbors and explain ourselves to them, and we would be foolish
to let that opportunity pass us by.
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By
Peggy Tartaro,
