April 24, 2007 7:43 AM
How I changed my views on gun control
In light of recent events - which gun control advocates are as usual quick to seize on - 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.
See my next entry for excerpts from a great article I found: Feeling Safer vs. Being Safer.
Posted in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
Hi Barbara,
Thanks for reposting this... great reading!
Please let me know if you'd ever like to come over to the NRA Range in Fairfax for a little target practice!
MG
(Director of Adv. Communications NRA)
Leesburg, VA
Posted by: Meg Guegan | April 24, 2007 4:39 PM
Excellent article. I doubt Clinton realizes what good he has done for our nation, pulling us out of our slumber when we realized who was at the wheel.
Posted by: Becky | April 24, 2007 6:15 PM
Just wanted to add some support to you here. More people must discard the "notion that guns are The Problem."
Posted by: Thia | April 25, 2007 8:17 AM
I have never lived in a home that DIDN'T have a gun. To be quite honest, I was well into my 20's before I realized that there were people that didn't own at least one.
I'm a little unsure about automatic weapons. I still think it's our right to own them. I think my fear comes from knowing some people who do own some. I'm concerned about their lack of knowledge on how to handle and operate such weapon. But more legislation isn't the answer.
Posted by: whimsy | April 25, 2007 8:37 AM
Thank you so much for your article!
I grew up with guns in the house and was taught to shoot at a very young age. I have wanted a gun to protect my family for a long time! My wife was always against the idea, but recently she warmed up to it. She said she did some research and looked at the world and realized that there are BAD people out there that want to hurt GOOD people, that is just the way it is. So, I bought my gun and then a few weeks later We bought HER gun. We both go to the range a few times a month and we take gun ownership VERY seriously. A gun is not a toy, it is not cool it is not something to play with. Neither of us would ever shoot anyone stealing our car or vandalizing our yard. But, I guarantee you that when I am away from home on business my wife is very capable of defending her self. I find most gun owners fit into the same category as we do. The media likes to protray us as nut cases, always locked and loaded and that is just not the case!!!
thnaks again for the refreshing article!
Posted by: Craig | May 7, 2007 8:47 PM
