By Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor

Nearly everyone reading this will be familiar with the odd occasion when someone totally unknown to you addresses you by your name-usually a barista or cab driver.

There's a brief moment when you think, "Huh?" And then you realize you're wearing a name tag-often the kind with your first name writ large.

Sometimes there will be a follow-up question, asking how you're enjoying your stay in whatever fair city you happen to be in, sometimes a remark at how busy everything is because your group is in town.

That happens most often when I attend either the SHOT Show, the annual firearms industry trade show, generally held in Las Vegas in January, or at the NRA Convention, held in a variety of cities in April or May each year.

The cabbie may ask how long the convention is in town for-a pleasantry that also gives him the time frame he can expect to be busiest.

Sometimes, whether it's SHOT or NRA, the driver will ask you about the "gun show," and I have had some interesting conversations with cabbies about guns and politics as a result.

When you're running around at a show, you often either need your name badge on for after-hours events, or don't remember to take it off when your working day is done, so I've also discussed guns and politics with restaurant workers, hotel desk clerks and bellmen.

Service workers have been trained to be pleasant and to make eye contact and remarks which will lead you to believe they find you the most fascination hotel guest/restaurant patron/fare they've ever encountered.
Of course, not all of them come naturally to chit-chat and wherever you go you will likely encounter someone who got up on the wrong side of the bed.

But, I can say with 20 plus years of wearing name tags that also bespeak me as someone involved with guns, I've never had anyone refuse me service or become hostile.

Likewise, I try to be extra pleasant on the road-not that I'm not cheerful and chipper most days-because once you put the badge on, you are representing a lot of people.

The whole idea of the name tag in business settings is to put everyone on the same footing and to allow for those brain-freeze moments when you know you know that guy, but just can't think of his name.
Fortunately "BOB" is there with his tag on and you can greet him and hopefully figure out how you know him.

Perhaps one of the most famous movie lines belongs to AlfonsoBedoya in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

"Badge?" says Bedoya, with the enmity you would expect from a bandit, "I don't have to show you no stinkin' badge!"

But badges in this case also serve as tiny ambassadorial papers-the gunowners are here, and they seem like decent folks, good tippers, interested in my suggestions, etc.

I wouldn't walk into a roomful of strangers and say "Hello, my name is Peggy and I'm a gunowner," and I don't know any sensible gunowner who would advise it.

But these small opportunities to be known to other people not simply as a customer are pretty rare. And if you can make someone you don't know think better of gunowners generally by wearing a badge, maybe it's a good idea to do so every once in a while.
As we end the year with this issue, it's time for my abbreviated, but heartfelt, thank yous:

To our Publisher, Julianne Versnel Gottlieb, the ususal thanks-and a reminder that copy is due soon.

To the board of trustees of the Second Amendment Foundation, and especially its president, Joseph Tartaro and executive director, Alan Gottlieb, thanks for the faith in the on-going evolution of Women & Guns.

Debbie Caruana has come on board here at W&G World Headquarters, helping in a thousand ways.

Thanks, as always to our webmaster, Keeva Segal, and to our contributing editors, who live up to the title every issue with innovations, suggestions and sometimes late copy.

Our advertisers help support these pages and deserve your thanks and support.

And, as I write every year, thanks especially to our readers, who make the whole thing worthwhile.

Peggy Tartaro

Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission.