By Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor

I first met journalist Caitlin Kelly over the phone in 1998 when she was working on an article for Penthouse magazine about women gunowners. Like a lot of journalists, she was most interested in the numbers game-trying to get a fix on how many of us there were.

Unlike most journalists who have posed that question to me over the years, Kelly became interested in more than statistics, and in a series of magazine and newspaper pieces (including a visit to the S&W Academy for The Wall Street Journal) began to explore more than just the headlines ("Blondes Have More Guns" being one of my favorites of the early 90s).

Eventually a book project took shape in which, over the course of 10 months, Kelly would meet and interview 104 American women on both sides of the gun ownership question.

The idea of sides is central to Kelly's final product, Blown Away (Pocket Books, Paperback, 336 pages, $13.00, ISBN #0743464184), but unlike just about every other socio-political gun book I've ever read, Kelly is more interested in what lies (or might lie) between the sides.

It's an interesting question-which sales figures of the just-released book may help answer-if a book which deals with one of the most polarizing of subjects and tries to remain if not neutral, then above the fray, will find a wide audience.

Kelly herself has twice been the victim of crime, both potentially, but not actually, violent in nature and she seems both in the book and in conversation about it, to be genuinely appalled by the statistics on violence against women and some of the more blatant "entertainment" products which exploit them.

In the course of eight years of reporting and writing about women gunowners, Kelly has taken firearms classes, attended events such as matches and gun shows, and talked with women across the country from an impressive cross section of American life.

I asked her how she managed to find so many different women to tell their stories and she said her research took a number of routes. She went to events like The Grand American Trapshoot in Vandalia, OH, and talked to competitors, who often directed her to others. Similarly, friends, and friends of friends, who heard about her project, volunteered acquaintances. She combed newspapers for stories and followed up on as many as she could.

Kelly told me she looked for subjects everywhere, including tracking down a woman big game hunter after seeing pictures of her trophy-filled home in House Beautiful.

She wanted especially, she told me, to convey the diversity of women she met-on both sides of the issue-and in that the book is certainly successful.

Perhaps an anti-gunner who reads Blown Away will come to the conclusion that it proves that side of the equation Kelly speaks of, but even with my own biases, I think the most compelling portraits in the book belong to women gunowners, from the competitive shooter, to the hunting guide, to the crime victims, who share their stories with Kelly. Many of the stories "genuinely touched" her Kelly said, and her respect for her subjects is evident in the book.

Unlike some of the magazine journalism on women gunowners, Kelly seems to have a clear understanding that women grapple with powerlessness and that many who find the answer in gunownership are not cartoon crazies, but real, sympathetic women.

Although she tries to balance the gun issue, Kelly has definite and discernable views, which are on display in the book and in her conversation.

She doesn't think much of gun shows (but told me she had attend several) and she supports a continuation of the so-called assault weapons ban.

On the other hand, she seems genuinely impatient with those on the other side who condescend to women gunowners, including those in the journalism community.

Women gunowners who read Blown Away may shake their heads a bit at some of Kelly's conclusions in her final chapter, "What to Do?" But the book has real value, I think, as an introduction to the people rather than policy that makes up the gun issue.