October 14, 2005 8:11 AM
How Barbara Got Her Gun
In light of the last entry - which touched on how I changed my radical leftist views when confronted with the daily reality of being a Mom - I thought you might enjoy this article I wrote in response to the Million Mom March. Remember? This was published in the ultra-liberal Marin Independent Journal and later in shortened form in The American Spectator. Keep in mind this was in April 2000, as we were wrapping up the Clinton White House years (hopefully forever).
How Barbara Got Her GunLike so many other Million-something events, last May's Million Mom March served up more style than substance, more rhetoric than reality. For this mom, it was a reminder of my own progress in discarding the notion that guns are The Problem.
It began last year when my husband Tripp decided to join the NRA. What for? I demanded. We didn't own any guns. In fact, both of us had solid pacifist roots. For years I'd even avoided killing the occasional household spider.
But Tripp's logic was compelling, going something like this: Just as we had struggled as leftists for our first amendment rights, we needed to do all we could to secure the second. Thus the NRA became an unlikely hero in our house.Besides, he added, having a gun for protection might not be a bad idea.
No way, said I. I'd already made my Big Concession ten years ago when I lifted my domestic toy gun ban. It was strictly strategic: my four weapons-deficient sons had become so gun-obsessed that they found every scraggly branch or sausage link capable of rapid fire. At toy stores, after loading up with things nonviolent, I'd have to drag them drooling from the artillery aisle. What if my repressive rule were to backfire, compelling them to become all I'd tried so desperately to keep them from becoming?
Like I said, strictly strategic.
When it came to having a real gun in our home, I stood my ground. And so for a while my hubby and sons proudly wore their NRA caps - causing liberal consternation wherever they went, I'm sure - and we may have been the only NRA members who didn't really even own a gun.
But then I started getting worried. The federal government's appetite for control over and intrusion into our lives seemed to be burgeoning faster than the speed of cyberspace. A lawsuit here, a land grab there, federal interference everywhere. Then there was the one-note response of the Clinton administration following each and every shooting tragedy - Let Us Take Care of The Problem . The last straw was when the state of California called for certain weapons to be registered, then followed up by confiscating the registered guns from their law-abiding owners - ensuring that now only criminals would have them. Then I knew it was time to allow - no, urge - my man to get his gun.
And so just in the past few months, for the first time I've seen a gun up close and personal, watched my men leave for target practice, experienced the security of knowing our home is protected when we go to sleep at night, and finally - in the culmination of a process that likely never would have begun had I not been more afraid of losing my constitutional rights than of exercising them - learned to ready, aim, and fire.
But perhaps I'm not all that unique.
In just the past eighteen months, NRA membership has increased by 30 % - soaring from 2.7 to 3.8 million - despite almost-unbelievably biased media coverage of the 129-year-old nonpartisan group.
Brian A Patrick, a University of Michigan Ph.D., has documented that bias. In a 1990-98 survey of the "elite" press (New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Christian Science Monitor), Patrick found that 87% of editorials and op-eds on the NRA were negative - as compared to 52% for the NAACP, ACLU, AARP, and HCI (Handgun Control, Inc.). He further found that journalists systematically mocked and belittled the NRA by running satirical headlines, discounting NRA leadership, ignoring NRA events, and choosing contentious words ("lobby" vs. "advocacy group", "claims" vs. "says").Patrick concluded, however, that rather than harming the NRA, this media bias is actually beneficial. It energizes the organization and mobilizes its membership. Perhaps the media would be surprised to learn that it's not just rubes in flyover country who are reacting to their clumsy attempts at thought control, but educated, sophisticated, and formerly self-identified liberals like me.
Some of us just can't give up the old wisdom: "Question Authority" no matter who's wearing the mantle this year. Some see a claim like this one by the Million Mom March - 12 children 19 and younger are killed by guns each day - and dig a little deeper to find that the rate is inflated by lumping together a wide age range. The National Center for Health Statistics show 10 times the number of deaths by firearms in the age bracket 15-19 than in the bracket 10-14, with the greatest rise among 15-19 year old black males - 126.6 deaths per 100,000, compared with 7.1 for black males aged 10-14.
We do well to be wary, to look beyond feelings and slogans. A government that already has 20,000 gun laws on the books, neglects their enforcement, then clamors for MORE! clearly has an agenda other than simply saving lives.
Could that be why whenever the post-tragedy grandstanding begins, gun sales soar?
All evidence indicates that the Clinton Administration has done more to arm the citizenry than any other in the history of the United States. Checking with my local gun dealers, I learned that not only are gun sales up, but that more women than ever are buying guns. For a woman threatened by violence, only a gun can so effectively level the playing field.
And for those who keep them to protect their homes and their families, guns have leveled plenty of playing fields Professor Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University and author of Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, estimates that citizens use firearms more than 2 ½ million times a year for self defense - 3 to 5 times the number of times guns are used for criminal purposes.
Which leads one to wonder why we hear only of guns taking lives, when they have probably saved so many more. Obviously to get some real perspective, we need to look a little further than what is filtered to us in the nightly news.
Perhaps it would have been more accurate to call it the Misguided Mom March. Because although it goes without saying that all mothers grieve to see senseless acts of violence - particularly those involving children - some of us need to start doing a better job on our homework.
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Comments
"in the culmination of a process that likely never would have begun had I not been more afraid of losing my constitutional rights than of exercising them - learned to ready, aim, and fire."
How did you do, Barbara?! I haven't shot ours in years, and need to soon because I have become afraid of our guns again... But I really enjoy target practice! AND I am a better shot than my husband ~ tee hee! He's a good shot, but it's fun to be a really good shot :)
We are in total agreement about doing all we can to protect these rights! Thanks for writing about this!
Posted by: Kari | October 14, 2005 9:37 AM
Well said, Barbara!
Posted by: Rachel | October 14, 2005 9:56 AM
Thanks, Rachel!
Kari -
I only did target practice twice. I really never overcame my squeamishness about guns, though I didn't mind the men in my family having them. They were in heaven when we moved from California to Virginia, where you can actually see people with guns in the grocery store, wlking down the street, or - to make a point - voting on election day. That's right - guns anytime, anywhere in Virginia - kind of like iced tea :) - well, seriously, you only see it once in a while, but there is that freedom.
This morning though, I realized I need to get over myself - am planning to ask Tripp to take me target shooting soon - wow, a real date, how romantic :)
Posted by: barbaracurtis | October 14, 2005 12:38 PM
I have heard that the situation in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina is causing more people to think about having guns to protect their homes, in case of the breakdown of civil law following another catastrophe.
I grew up in a pacifist home, but my father hunted when I was very small, and my brothers did target shooting, later on. People who grow up in the country are often familiar with having firearms around.
Hunting season, when we lived in Michigan, was a big thing. Whole dead deer, hanging from basketball rims in the driveways, sometimes.
Posted by: Julana | October 15, 2005 9:30 PM
My husband and I joined the NRA 2 years ago and I joked that we were probably the only NRA members who didn't own a gun! Now I figure there are others like us. LOL
We want to buy a gun of some sort, but because neither of us grew up with guns, we feel we would have to go all the rigamarole on how to use them, etc and it seems that we never get around to it.
But it is on our list of things to do. I would feel a lot better having a gun in the house that I knew how to use, especially when my husband is gone.
Maggie
Posted by: Maggie | October 16, 2005 7:13 PM
