The People of the Gun greeted part one of Ms. Magazine’s “My Month with a Gun” series with universal opprobrium. Deservedly so. “I drove to where a police officer had pulled over another driver. Now, writing this, I realize that rolling up on an on-duty cop with a handgun in tow might not have been fully thought through. I told him I just bought a gun, had no clue how to use it. I asked him to make sure there were no bullets in the magazine or chamber. He took the magazine out and cleared the chamber. He assured me it was empty and showed me how to look. Then he told me how great the gun was and how he had one just like it.” No surprise that Ms. Magazine bailed on Heidi Yewman’s anti-gun CCW project—or that thedailybeast.com picked it up. But surely part two couldn’t be as bad, right? Wrong . . .
Only two days into my experiment I went to breakfast with my two kids and some friends. After eating and shopping, my gun with me the entire time, I was anxious to get home to enjoy the warm weather. I put my purse on the counter and then spent the next hour out on the back deck. Walking into the kitchen to refresh our drinks, I noticed my purse with the 9mm Glock still inside it. I’d forgotten to lock it up! Panic set in as I realized my teen son was playing videogames just 10 feet away. What if he’d decided to get the socks I’d bought him from my purse while I was out on the deck? Thoughts raced through my mind and I pondered how I’d just straddled the fine line between being a responsible gun owner and an irresponsible idiot whose 15-year-old just accidentally shot himself or someone else with my gun.
Heads-up Heidi! That’s no fine line you’re snorting walking. A gun should either be on your hip or in a safe. Note: on your hip. Not in a purse. If you’d spent any time researching gun safety (especially hereabouts) you’d know that off-body carry is inherently dangerous. The gun’s hard to get to when you need it and there’s an excellent chance the firearm will not be under your control at all times.
As you learned. Oh wait. “I went to three parties in homes where children played just feet from the pile of guests’ jackets and purses, including mine with the gun inside.”
You’d think that a woman who’s so paranoid about firearms that it’s [allegedly] keeping her up at night and making her afraid of her own shadow would spend a little less time obsessing and a lot more time training. Not our Heidi. Home carry? Never heard of it.
Since having the gun I’ve had two repairmen, a carpet cleaner, and a salesmen in my home. If the gun’s for self-protection, it’s not going to do any good in the safe, but it’s not really practical to have the gun pointing at them as they work. How else would I eliminate the element of surprise if I were attacked? Suspiciousness and fear of people is new to me, and I don’t like it. Living with a gun has not been easy.
Not for Heidi it hasn’t—even though the “inconvenience” of it all led the not-so-reluctant reluctant gun blogger to argue for national concealed carry reciprocity. So she decided to ditch her gat. But how?
So what do you do when you no longer want a gun in your home? There are hundreds of turn-in programs, but some take a more creative approach. One artist melts down seized guns and turns them into jewelry; there’s a sculptor who turns melted-down guns into public art; and one local government office turns guns into plaques that include inscriptions from school kids about ending gun violence. My gun is now a piece of art.
Really? Internet rulez: if you don’t post a photo, it didn’t happen. Anyway, it’s over. What should have been an ongoing series turned into a two-part journey into Ms. Yewman’s heart of darkness.
I felt a huge sense of relief the day I got rid of the gun. I no longer had to worry that my teenagers or their friends would use my gun when I wasn’t home. I didn’t have to worry that I would be in a situation where I would make a choice about taking another life. I didn’t have to worry that my gun would be stolen out of my car and then used to murder someone. And I didn’t have to worry that one day I would get a diagnosis or have a personal crisis and have a gun on hand to turn on myself.
Reading between the lines, this woman needs some serious psychological counseling. Or not; people who don’t want a gun shouldn’t have one. But that doesn’t mean that people that do shouldn’t. Oh, and when it comes to an anti-gunner strapping-up and opting out, Dan Baum did it better.
She will always have to worry about her ‘teenagers”, she has obviously raised them to be idiots.
+1. If you can train a dog, you can raise a child.
In Wendy’s case, both are likely to have bad outcomes. Can we tie her tubes? Or is it too late?
+1 and if you cannot train a dog, don’t have kids.
Uh oh
I’ve met a lot of people who can’t train a dog for sh!t…
I’m not sure what she was so worried about. She bought a pistol even though she could not determine if it was loaded or not! Did she happen to think about buying any ammunition for that same pistol? Did she get the right caliber? Did she ever figure out how to load the thing?
As paranoid as she seems to be about the evil gun in her purse, if this story is not fiction, she probably never loaded it anyway and so except for being stolen she really had nothing to worry about.
^this!
She bought a gun, ignored anything and everything the shop keeper showed/told her. She had to ask a beat cop if the gun was unloaded or not so even if she did buy some ammunition it is very unlikely she even opened the box.
In her defense…. I laughed my ass off reading her little piece of fiction. Not the best story teller out there, but still pretty damn funny.
I wonder if she’s constitutionally incapable of teaching her kids, “This is NOT a toy!”
This woman needs some serious psychological counseling! “I bought a kitchen knife because I thought I’d learn to cook but was so afraid I might cut myself I called the police to take it away and my car as well so I don’t run over someone.”
She didn’t want to find herself in a situation where she had the choice to defend herself or be a victim. Making choices is hard, best to leave that to the philosophers and thinkers in government, let them make all those decisions for us. I love big brother. *BANG*
This, exactly. Making the choice to roll out of bed at 3:15AM and go to work is a choice I wish I didn’t have to make. Making the choice to hand over my keys before I drink is a choice I don’t want to make. Making a choice to get work done rather than play video games is a choice I wish someone could just take away from me. But that’s not the way the world works. Our lives are made up of choices (I know that’s a song lyric somewhere…). Some of them are tough, but that’s why we have to grow the f&ck up and deal with them.
Word.
A more accurate summary would be “I did a bunch of stupid stuff and nothing bad happened… but I’m going to act like it anyway”
The entire episode smacks of Janet Cooke/Stephen Glass style journalism. From the beginning Ms. Yewman’s story was not credible. Without video evidence of her claims I have to go with this is pure fiction.
funny – I went to college w/ Glass. He was on the school paper and had never seen a drug deal so I drove him to N. Philly to watch a buy.
So Glass actually witnessed something before writing about it? A little out of character.
HEY! It made him an EXPERT on the drug subculture.
Which, as the rest of us know, is simply “American culture.”
He went to my law school, which apparently doesn’t bother to check the ‘moral fitness’ issue in every case. The NY bar turned him down. Hopefully the CA Supremes will eventually do the same. [Real men don’t write for their school paper. They start an alternative paper that puts the ‘real’ one out of business. ]
YES!! Made my day. Thanks. Once upon a time, I was a freshman majoring in journalism. I had ambitions of maybe magazine work, but every single thing was geared towards the daily metro newspaper. I refused to work for the school newspaper, and soon transferred to another major I quickly came to loathe: Advertising.
Ironically, decades later, I found myself working at the same newspaper the Journalism department head (and my “advisor”) worked for. But not in the newsroom, I’m happy to say.
Small world. I went to law school with him. Some of my classmates were not happy about it.
Weren’t happy about what? About you being in the same school as him? Weren’t they also?
I guess the “it” could have been better explained, but I think most readers got the gist. Let me clarify: They were not happy about a fraud – Glass, not me – being admitted to their law school.
Of course, he never had a legal career, as noted by Roping. So he got the joy of a ridiculously high-priced education with no means to pay off his student debt, which cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
I agree. This whole thing really sounds like it’s 100% concocted. If she was really as scared of this gun as she claims, then there’s no way she’d just forget it was in her purse, or leave it laying around small children. It’s fiction, and not particularly convincing fiction at that.
If either of the media outlets that published this pap had any shred of journalistic integrity, they’d ask her to produce a receipt or some other evidence that any of this happened.
BINGO. This is an artifice, not anything that happened in the real world.
So to summarise: She bought a gun and then proceeded to leave it laying around in all kinds of places, and then spent most of her time worrying that she’d left it laying around in odd places? Weird.
What’s even more shocking is that she didn’t address her own
irresponsibility. I’m amazed. Really.
Or her own inherent fear of others that she’s able to control only by pretending that we live in a fantasy-land where nobody would ever hurt her. That’s not a gun issue, that’s a person issue.
At long last and oh goody. This ought to be amusing. I’ve missed Wendy’s wonderful prose.
All this nonsense is fiction, anyway. If it isn’t happening in real life, they’ll just “invent” it from the recesses of their 8 year-old brains & call it “real”.
Same goes for all the other non-stop, “unfairness” of life they conjure up to continue the endless victim fantasy.
After all, if the world isn’t a big, mean, nasty place that brutalizes us from one second to the next, what excuse will we have for being such miserable losers?
It’s GOT to be somebody else’s fault!!!
I some how hope Trayvon comes back from the dead and starts to “Ground-Pound” this idiot so she eventually realizes what protection she gave up. A progressive is a wonderful thing to waste…
wishing supernatural violence on a woman you’ve never met makes you sound unstable.
Unless it’s zombies.
Then you’re just young.
Don’t worry, there is always a Trayvon Martin out there, but more likely to encounter her son than her, what a beat down he’s going to get from being raised by such a dolt!
“A progressive is a wonderful thing to waste…”
Interesting statement. I’m going to spend some time on that one. My first impression: I like it.
What was the Stienbeck book, purported as fact, “My Travels with Charlie” or some such title?
Never was there a more obvious, self reverent, specious, two dimensional, waste of wood pulp put before the public and lauded as “fact” by the Liberal Elite,,, Until this piece of Yellow Journalism.
One part of “Travels With Charley” did ring true for me – he mentioned driving through Golden Valley, MN and was disappointed that it wasn’t “golden” or even a valley. I grew up in the suburbs right next door to Golden Valley, and the only thing Golden about it was the color if its water tower. (Well, it was in the 1960’s.)
There was a newspaper item on it (the unique color of the water tower), and they said that the golden color was a special formulation of paint, which couldn’t be properly reproduced in newspaper ink.
Is this woman just trying to prove that you have the right to be an idiot in America? Didn’t realize that was even up for debate.
“…you have the right to be an idiot in America.”
Sounds like she wants to make it mandatory.
Every “Right” the Left holds dear must be manadatory. All other rights are “Obsolete,” like free speech.
And… IF such a “right” they feel should exist, even if it violates other “rights” will be made into a “right” and the conflicting “rights” made null and void, or if it was one they wanted, made an exception to.
Does anyone actually believe any of this woman’s story? It is like she took every anti gun argument and lie and wrote it into a first person narrative. It is like reading propaganda from the 1940s. I call BS.
It’s like a pilot script for a new Sara Jessica Parker show: “Guns in the City.” And every bit as vapid.
I’m having a really hard time with this one. For being “paranoid’ about what this gun could potentially hypothetically maybe do when sitting in the house, she’s pretty carefree when it comes to getting strangers in her house, going to parties, hell, rolling up on cops when its suits her, with no thought to any of the ways that stuff go go wrong.
Anyway, I’m convinced that we’re all a little safer without her on the team.
She came up to a cop who had stopped someone just to announce she had a handgun and she wanted him to look at it? AND HE DID?
I don’t ****ing believe that ever happened.
She has something else you don’t, Mike. Cops have *needs*, too.
What that cop “needed” was to get back to work.
If she had an encounter with a cop, where’s her dead dog to prove it?
This is almost comical! She acts as if she were carrying a thermonuclear device for awhile and finally passed it on the the military. What a nut! I am so weary with the emotionally fueled drivel these liberal goons abuse us with. Obviously she did not take this seriously. She did not participate in any training, or even attempt to understand what she was doing. She bought it, carried it, and wrote her piece now believing she tried it and could describe the experience thoroughly. Makes me sick. If she was so worried about her teen child accessing the gun, why not sit them down, explain how the gun works and that it is not a toy, it is a tool of personal protection and why you have chosen to carry it. That you would like them not to touch it and if they would like to handle it or shoot it that that can only be achieved under your direct supervision. Carry a smaller pocket gun at home for home carry if you feel the need and if you are afraid of the workmen in your home why have them there in the first place? If I was afraid someone might harm me or my family I certainly wouldn’t let them in my home! Her whole premise is clearly to claim she did it and then bash the whole idea. Now that her gun is “a work of art” I sure hope no one does assault her or her family because she has chosen to deliver herself to them unchallenged. Some people are so stupid perhaps they shouldn’t share their opinions.
Wheelgun
“she has chosen to deliver herself to them unchallenged” Yes! And then she published the fact nation-wide.
“…why not sit them down, explain how the gun works…”
That one’s easy to answer, because she doesn’t understand how the gun works, that’s why.
In the end she treats this like an HIV infected syringe and doesn’t understand which end can infect her. She doesn’t really want to even touch the thing but in order to “educate” her readers, she’s willing to carry it around in her purse and write about how she “feels” about the experience. She could have carried a Kimber sales brochure and gotten the same feeling without endangering anyone else.
Love your handle, Soccerchainsaw. I’m a charter member of the Soccer Haters of America, myself.
Whenever I engage a Soccer Person defending or extolling the dubious “virtues” of the sport (I admit it is one, though not much of one), I ask them why it is that it’s the only sport that attracts such dreadful thug hooligans. Criminals, really. They have no answer, because they’ve never confronted the issue themselves.
My theory is that the lack of real contact and the interminable periods when absolutely nothing happens on the, er, PITCH, builds tension without an outlet of release.
Aside from the occasion Giants fans (and formerly Eagles fans), Football, American style, has no large-scale mob violence. Nor does Hockey, a violent contact sport, or MMA…. you get my point.
That was weird and random. Where are the US soccer hooligans? AFAIK, it’s more of a European phenomenon, and likely proportional to the popularity.
Maybe she never has adult conversations with her children because they are too busy playing video games. I remember conversations with my parents. I had to put the Nintendo down and come talk about my grades or some other thing in life where I was not quite on par for success. Then we came up with plans to improve it. My dad also had multiple gun conversations with me. One of the first I remember was gun safety and how they were not toys. The second I remember when I was a kid and he showed me where the gun cabinet key was and he trusted me with firearms in the house. It was actually an amazing moment knowing my father trusted me like that. I never let him down either by being unsafe. I guess that is called active parenting and a lost art.
A person who hates and fears guns, finds out that she hates and fears guns.
Worried her kids will use it. Either she did not educate them, or does not trust them.
Worried it will be used against her. Well, if you’re afraid of it.. yeah, it is more likely.
Had gun 30 days, considered herself properly trained.
Did not live up to acceptable level of responsibility.
Ignored common knowledge safety concerns.
Didn’t want a gun.
The only thing this proves, is that she shouldn’t be a gun owner.
““A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”
– Sigmund Freud
‘Nuff said.
Hey. Where’s part 1?
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/06/12/my-month-with-a-gun-week-one/
Wendy reminds me of the neurotic GF who overthinks how the relationship has progressed based upon whether or not I order a side order of shrimp fried rice to compliment her chinese food order. . . . . or the kind who breaks into you house, assaults your wife, boils your kid’s pet bunny years after you dismiss her from the team. Just saying. . . .
What struck me as weird, though sadly not surprising, is she claimed to be on the board of the Brady Campaign and write a pro-gun control book but had no idea how to use or clear a Glock and was worried that racking the slide could cause it to go off? I would think basic journalistic integrity (don’t laugh) and research needs for her book/position would have taught her the general workings of a modern handgun.
I don’t think people who publish an opinion on guns should have to be master IDPA shooters, and we all make the cartridge/bullet mistake from time to time, but some basic knowledge should really be required before publications take you seriously.
Like most journalists today, she proceeds from a position of ignorance, and is perfectly content to stay that way.
First +100 of the day!
And she wasn’t at any time or in any way intending or expecting her article to be read by anyone who actually knew anything about guns already. Her intent was to ensure that people who were already ignorant out guns became to frightened and paranoid to try to find out.
Why let facts get in the way of a position?
She says she’ll only do the bare minimum, but also that she’ll be ready to use it. Nope nope nope.
I also like that she leaves out that she had to go through a NICS check, leaving antis to assuming she didn’t have to.
“I no longer had to worry that my teenagers or their friends would use my gun when I wasn’t home”.
She just doesn’t get it, does she? Too much to ask for I guess.
Stupid *@!$ broke her OWN first rule… “Yes, I bought a handgun and will carry it everywhere I go over the next 30 days. I have four rules: Carry it with me at all times, follow the laws of my state, only do what is minimally required for permits, licensing, purchasing and carrying, and finally be prepared to use it for protecting myself at home or in public.”
All the more reason it’s good she isn’t still carrying. At least we know now that her “magic gun” won’t just up and kill someone on its own…
I doubt she ever even bought a gun.
I think this whole thing is fantasy based on the experience she “thinks” a frightened anti gunner like her would have with a real firearm in their possession for a period of time; a true anchor hanging from her neck.
Agreed. And if she did buy one she also broke rule 4, “be prepared to use it for protecting myself at home or in public.” Unloaded and without ammo, I doubt it. I doubt the whole story, in fact.
Am I the only one that is freakin annoyed at the stupid petmeds ad that keeps playing.
Adblocker Plus. Fixes that.
I want to kill BING!
You can block the vast majority of them with a "hosts" file.
I guess this is proof that there are some people that just should not have guns. It just so happens that it’s not the people that she thinks shouldn’t have guns (i.e. everyone).
She’s talking about her gun as if she has a pound of meth in her purse.
Nah, she already used up the Meth writing the article.
She needs to worry more about the gallon of drank her kids brewed up and mixed with her anxiety meds…
WHEEE!
Is this Heidi another one of those Talking Heidi Vaginas that I’ve been reading about?
http://dailyladybits.blogspot.com/2013/06/vagina-talk-standing-with-wendy.html
Heidi? I meant Wendy. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell them apart.
Are there both Talking Heidi vaginas and Talking Wendy vaginas? Do they come in different colors?
Are you sure you don’t mean vulvae?
she claims to have stopped an officer during a stop he was performing? is she nuts?
it probably never did happen and should never happen.
I read that and nearly spit my drink all over my keyboard. my agency is pretty gun friendly, but even still, you should NEVER approach an officer in the middle of a stop and say “hey I have a gun!” that, along with several posts in this article make me believe that she is fantasizing and writing this crap down, or at least is the world’s most careless (emotionally and mentally) person.
lots of bags lying around unattended while kids have a party with them. really? and why the hell is it not on your body, as you planned to do? this article could have just as easily – and better – written about identity theft as opposed to careless accidents involving firearms.
as noted above, she is kinda neurotic about her offspring. it leads me to wonder when she is planning on weaning them off the teat and teaching them something about personal responsibility – even though I have seen none of it in this article. also, why are your kids apparently rummaging through your purse all the time with no sense of propriety or sense of someone else’s property?
what a great way to get those kids started off on the right track!
Failed to notice until just now, regarding her paranoia and her kids – where’s daddy? If she wasn’t such a flaky liberal, probably radical feminist, her childrens’ daddy would probably still be hanging around and willing to take on these tasks. Either that or he’d be the same kind of worthless gun-grabbing idiot she is.
He probably dumped her years ago, and is in a custody battle for the kids.
“The representation of the penis as a weapon, cutting knife, dagger etc., is familiar to us from the anxiety dreams of abstinent women in particular and also lies at the root of numerous phobias in neurotic people.”
– Sigmund Freud
Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar.
You’re welcome. 😉
god, what an idiot…and the reason we should give a rat’s you know what about anything she spews about a subject she obviously knows nothing about is…? excuse me, i have to lie down 🙁
It’s like Penthouse Forum for hoplophobes.
Coffee Spew!
For the Win!!!
See anything for the “dailybeast”. Not hard to understand how this broad’s pap meets their “standards”.
Times 2
Pulatso got me with that one too… glad I have a spill proof keyboard. Time to clean the screen… :-/
Good, now she can begin her next experiment with cars. I’m sure she’ll feel much safer without having to endanger herself and her children every day on the roads. Did you know close to 34,000 people die in motor vehicle accidents and there are almost 11 million accidents each year? What if her teenage son wanted to get to the socks she bought him in her purse and took her keys, stole her car, and rammed a full van head on? What about all those kids at parties when her keys are just sitting there in her purse, they could easily steal her keys and drive off. There are hundreds of charities that will turn that guided missile of death into provisions for the poor or needy.
Then she can move on to alcohol just sitting there in the cabinets, or prescription or over-the-counter drugs, or cleaning supplies. She should be relieved to be free of those as well because they can be dangerous if abused (I’ll skip the obvious character attack linked to that thought).
Fact is she didn’t teach her kids about guns or even have a conversation about it because she doesn’t know the first thing about them herself. Most parents talk to kids about dangers, like not touching fire. In this case I feel bad for the kids. Again, you can’t wear high heels and a dress for a few days as a man and claim to understand what it is to be a woman. Being a responsible gun owner is a culture and lifestyle, not just the possession of a gun. There is a simpler counter-point to her “experiment”, though. There are millions of responsible gun owners that do not commit any crimes or violence. If you want to compare say cars and guns there is a 0.003% gun-to-homicide rate and a rate of 0.0134% for passenger vehicles-to-deaths (11,000 homicides, 310 million guns, 34,000 motor vehicle deaths, 254 million passenger vehicles). We’ll ignore that according to the FBI nearly 80% of those homicides are gang-related and not “random crime”. But what about comparing accidents? http://www.justfacts.com/images/guncontrol/accidents_fatal-full.png
What about non-fatal accidents? Guns come in at around 15,000 in 2007, cars came in at 10.6 million. http://www.justfacts.com/images/guncontrol/accidents_nonfatal-full.png
I’m sure she’ll give up her car once she sees the facts, oh wait, it’s never been about facts. It’s far more logical give up or infringe on private transportation to save lives, something that is not a right, than to give up or infringe on firearm ownership, but that doesn’t mean we should give up or infringe on either. The point of comparison is not to say “guns don’t do any harm because cars do more harm” it’s to show the principle behind the logic. Cars are defended by their social utility yet guns have far better ratios on the basis of social utility. If you keep one on that basis you have to keep the other, it doesn’t matter if one scares you or you don’t want to participate or become responsible for yourself. I’ve never seen an effort to deny private transportation “for the children”, hell, we can’t even seem to take the keys away from people that legitimately should not be driving (due to medical or other reasons) because it’s “their right to independence”.
@Fred:
Well said: “Being a responsible gun owner is a culture and lifestyle, not just the possession of a gun. “
“There ain’t no cure for stupid.”
Well, there’s The Darwin Effect, but the “Progressives” are even trying to rescind that!
Was the gun ever even loaded?
No.
Learning to use a firearm (assuming you don’t know any gun guys) is a catch-22. You need a gun to learn how it works, but you should know how one works before using it. She did zero due diligence by not having the gun store help her learn how her gun works. A Glock no less. Due diligence would have been to ask.
I live in a constitutional carry state, and it is certainly my due diligence to get range time before carrying. Whether or not she had a permit, it was her due diligence to make sure she could put a full magazine on a human sized target at 5 yards (at minimum) before carrying it.
This article, as many have said, is just intentional recklessness to attempt to prove a point. She went out of her way to avoid doing the responsible thing in every situation.
I’m not going to try to drive cross country the day after I get a drivers license even though I could until I have enough practice to be comfortable doing so. I wouldn’t trust her with a rubber-band gun.
“What if he’d decided to get the socks I’d bought him from my purse while I was out on the deck?”
What self respecting teen goes through his moms purse in search of brand new socks? Gum, sure. Socks? Really?
And why is she so scared about where her gun is? Didn’t she refuse to load it? Does she think it will somehow make magical bullets on its own?
“socks”, Libspeak for condoms…
Nice one.
My response:
“I am sorry that you felt the need to put yourself in such an uncomfortable situation. Not everyone is prepared to accept the responsibility of being not only a gun owner but a concealed carrier. I have a friend I work with who vehemently states that she is not comfortable or responsible enough to carry a gun. I do not push guns on her as that is a choice for her to make.
Most people that decide to carry a firearm do so understanding their responsibilities to the public and not all states allow you to obtain a concealed license without training. I had to go through an 8 hour class and pass both a written test as well as a shooting test before being able to send away for my license. I am not saying this should be mandatory, but I am giving you an example.
Something else you should note from the majority of carriers is that they train more than is required. Just in my area, there are 7 different gun ranges that offer weekly 4 hour classes. They are booked up for the next two months. This does not sound to me like people doing the minimal necessary to have a weapon, it sounds more like responsible owners going above and beyond to ensure if they have to employ that weapon, they understand what they are doing with it.
You speak of fear while carrying, thinking that everyone around you is a danger of some sort. Carrying a gun should make you more aware of your surroundings. You should notice who is around you and what is happening around you, but I don’t believe this should be JUST for people who carry a gun. My sister, a 27 year old grad student lives 3 states away from me. She is a what I call a social butterfly. She is the kind, sweet, polite and accepting person that everyone holds in high esteem. She is also naive. She doesn’t see the danger in the world. Do I wish we lived in a perfect society where guns were not needed? Sure. Then guns would only be used for hunting and competition. I, however, am realistic and realize that the world is not perfect, in fact, it is far from it as more people are polarized by their own beliefs and agendas. As you and some of the more poignant comments here have shown. The world is not a utopia and it never will be as long as human nature is involved.
With all of that said, what I would like those who do not carry to understand is that because we live in a free country, and because we have the opportunity to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is not someone else’s choice what I am allowed to do, such as carry a firearm. I am not telling you that you have to carry because it is safer for you. I am not advocating that anyone force you to do anything. I am asking that you respect my choice to carry and that instead of trying to force yourself into a situation you don’t understand and making an inanimate object the source of fear and intimidation, realize that it is merely a tool. A tool that has provided us the freedoms and securities that we currently have today in this country and a tool that is still used to protect that security. Yes, any tool can be misused. Instead of punishing the tool and those that use it correctly, why not advocate for stronger penalties against those who use it improperly?”
You should have stopped at the first paragraph. Too many words for Ms. readers to read. Too much work. Too much thinking.
The woman is a fool and most likely a liar as well. I shall stop just short of wishing her a victim of crime. But she could use the learning experience…..
Ms. Magazine has published a statement “in Response to Alleged
Pro-Gun Bullying”.
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/07/10/statement-of-ms-magazine-in-response-to-alleged-pro-gun-bullying/
The statement does not actually say what the “pro-gun bullies” have
a problem with. After looking at the comments here and a few
other sites, I’m guessing most took exception to Yewman proudly
writing about her feelings, anxieties and neuroses and blatantly
ignoring her irresponsible handling and lack of training. But I’m
not surprised that these comments aren’t posted. That would
really throw a monkey wrench at the “gun-owners are untrained
psychos” narrative.
Her prologue on the Daily Beast does allude to these comments:
“More than 2,000 commenters responded to that article—most of
them angry gun-rights advocates saying how stupid I was;”
She goes on to state, “Most of them missed the point entirely: the
experiment was designed to show how easy it is to obtain a gun
without being required to know how to use it.”
At no point was this addressed in her articles. It’s all too apparent
that the STATED points she tried to write about changed ex post facto.
Yewman continues with a heavy dose of irony and hypocrisy:
“Responsible gun owners will seek out training. But what worries
me—and what should worry everyone—is the irresponsible owners
possessing some of the more than 200 million guns in the U.S. today.”
She’s right. I do find it worrying that there are irresponsible gun
owners and users. However, after her month long “experiment”
and self-documented negligence, I am happy that there is at least
one less irresponsible gun owner to worry about.
Absolutely!
However, Ms. *DOES* state what they didn’t like:
“…We were soon deluged with responses, almost all of them attacking the piece and the reporter, some even including Yewman’s home address—presumably to encourage others to track her down and set her straight.”
I’d be upset too.
“…We moderate reader comments, and reserve the right not to publish comments we consider to be abusive or threatening. With thousands of comments flooding in, we weren’t able to do so with the staff we have in a timely fashion.”
That’s why some responses didn’t get published.
“No one should suggest Ms. is unwilling to publish tough pieces on guns. The opposite is true. That’s why Yewman came to us in the first place. That’s why we published her piece. And that’s why her piece is still up on our site.”
So their standards are so low (and their need for gratuitous web hits so high) that when this screwball approached them with her article, they smelled blood and took it on. Sad, but not uncommon…
If Yewman’s claim of over 2,000 comments is true,
there’s more than “some” that didn’t get posted.
Were there dozens if not hundreds calling Yewman
a putz? Probably. But I’d bet there are as many
if not more deriding her irresponsibility and
hypocrisy. It is these comments from pro-gun
owners rightfully showing outrage at Yewman
for purposely, and I’d argue negligently, refusing
training and then blaming the firearm for her
continued anxiety that aren’t getting any play.
A 1,000 comments from pro-gunners pushing
training is something any anti-gun magazine
would consider “abusive or threatening”, albeit
to the anti-gun narrative.
If she really did do the things she claimed then she should be ashamed.
She put so many people at risk by being a very irresponsible gun owner. I am glad she no longer has her glock.
She is foolish to think her children will not visit homes that are armed.If those gun owners are as foolish as she is then her children are still at risk.
>> buys a glock.
>>uses picture in story of anything but a glock
>>mfw
-.-
A basic premise in this type of situation would be to have more intelligence than the inanimate object being discussed. She didn’t make it.
I thought the current fashion among hysterical hoplophobes was to cast it into the cracks of Mount Doom…
I really don’t get this one. Owning a gun does not cause self-defense situations to pop up, and not owning one will not prevent them from arising. The only difference is that now, instead of finding yourself in a situation where you may have to end someone’s life to save your own, you can now find yourself in situations where you would have to take someone’s life to save your own, but can’t and so you die. Hooray.
We still win. Idiot buys gun. Carries it about, and leaves it about, in a most reckless fashion. No one is hurt.
You can see it as a win; you can call it a loss (maybe). In the end, it’s meaningless, and probably virtually readerless. The largest readership may be TTAG.
I’m so surprised the neighbors over for drinks didn’t ask “we need to know, first, is there a gun in this house?” I personally enjoy articles like the one discussed in this post. They reassure me that the ‘leaders’ of the gun confiscation movement are running the movement off the rails. In a country in which several Oregon counties effectively have no police response, in which Detroit’s PD responds in 58 minutes (sensibly recommending that citizens prepare to defend themselves), Heidi decides that leaving a loaded gun in a purse randomly abandoned is an argument against carry? Bring it on, Heidi. Bring it on.
It was unloaded the whole time she owned it. I don’t think she bought ammo.
Because mostly, this just happened in her imagination. And in the article, which has had a HUGE readership… at TTAG.
so who else is with me in going to her blog and demanding proof this happened?
Woman is an irresponsible arse, she must get some training, then get loads more training, then practice and most of all grow up!
That training would cut into the Starbucks money so that’s not an option.
My gun is now a piece of art.
And? I own a (fully functional) piece of art or two. 🙂
See also, guns as art:
http://youtu.be/jaBpeTRL1QA
Probably not what Heidi would have in mind….
“My gun is now a piece of art.”
It always was.
I think you missed the part where she said it was a Glock. A Glock is an exquisite machine, but it sure ain’t no art.
Calling a Glock “art” is like calling a toaster “art”. It’s an appliance.
Her fear was completely unnecessary, and self induced. This is evident as we all know because, as the gun was unloaded the whole time, she left an inanimate object laying around, like a loaf of bread, or a tampon, or a bottle of her liberal vinegar douchery, (imagine the 15yr old finding it and she’d have have the sex talk, oh the horror!) or a cell phone. Unless she was afraid her kid would use it to call up a call girl, contract HIV and die from AIDS. “BAN CELL PHONES FOR MINORS!” Would be her next phobia to attack.
“it’s not really practical to have the gun pointing at them as they work”.
Tears of laughter are streaming down my face. How did she resist asking them to please “move a little to the left; don’t ask! I can’t tell. OH ALL RIGHT!! There’s a G-G-G-GUN in my purse! PLEASE FORGIVE ME!”
Coming in the fall: MY MONTH WITH A CROCODILE.
“Since having the gun I’ve had two repairmen, a carpet cleaner, and a salesmen in my home.”
I find this segment interesting, because she only starts to assume she might have to defend herself from repairman AFTER she has acquired her firearm. (And let her irrational fear take the wheel.)
Before this idiocy she calls journalism, and now after she skipped out early, she will never give the same situation a second thought, because it’s OBVIOUSLY the gun that would have caused anyone to attack her.
But now that the evil gun is gone she will be safe once again. . .
I wonder if she will play fetch if I throw a pair of designer shoes into traffic. . .
We know what she DIDN’T have them over for.
“If the gun’s for self-protection, it’s not going to do any good in the safe, but it’s not really practical to have the gun pointing at them as they work.”
Doesn’t she know that most responsible gun owners ALWAYS keep a piece pointed at the repairman? It’s the prudent thing to do. Especially plumbers. Keep that laser trained on his butt crack. Keep your finger off the trigger until he finds an “unexpected problem.”
As a contractor, the image of working with the client pointing a gun at me made me laugh out loud.
So, basically this little series was just a showcase of what an irresponsible slag she is.
Wow. That was exactly my take on it. It was all about Heidi’s many fears and anxieties.
That applies to everything she said.
I don’t believe she got threats. Her moderators let only a carefully selected few comments through, on her original piece. This is the Internet. Stuff is logged. Unless it came through Tor, stuff would come from an identifiable and probably logged IP. Find out who done it!
I don’t believe her story about “being yelled at by overweight men wearing guns” at Starbucks. Video, or it didn’t happen.
Because children at age 15 have the belief that their mothers carry toy guns and that they need to run off and play with them. Immediately.
I don’t believe that this woman actually bought or carried a firearm. Both of her pieces sound completely made up. The point isn’t to talk about her daily experiences carrying a gun, they both just contain vague, made-up details as a vehicle for her anti-gun agitprop. I can’t even fathom why she would be that terrified of an inanimate object, or why she would consider pointing her weapon at people she invited into her home, or any of the things she does in this piece.
She believes she is making a clever point about uninformed idiots purchasing and carrying a weapon, but she doesn’t seem to understand that not every person needs training. If you don’t know how to handle a firearm, or have any concept about what constitutes a safe practice or not, maybe you need training. If you know what you are doing, you don’t need that training. Which is why training is voluntary, as it should be. It is irrelevant though, because she doesn’t want people to get training, she wants to make it harder for them to purchase weapons.
This whole deal is an irresistible excersize in fish-in-a-barrel, but I don’t doubt that she got threats from creeps. There’s a lot of hate out there. It’s not hard to find instances of TTAG commentors wishing bodily harm on people they largely agree with. Sending virtual hate mail is never a good debate tactic.
We’ve been way to hard on her… I know how she feels. I just bought a car to experience the “car culture” of America. As we all know this is a very dangerous practice. I’m constantly terrified that my 6 year old will find the keys and drive on the interstate. I had to pull over and ask a policeman if I were driving dangerously since I didn’t know how to tell. I always felt uneasy knowing it was sitting out there in the garage. I would have to every have to swerve to avoid an accident and endanger those around me.
My reply on her blog entry.
Heidi Yewman you are either lying to all of us or you are fool. Owning a gun is a big responsibility and I have to believe that you would be smart enough to not leave your loaded gun lying around? I think most people would have sought out some training and even sent some rounds downrange.
What I think is really happening is that you are playing the part of the dumb gun owner. You are purposefully writing about all the stupid things you are doing to prove a point about gun ownership. You are not a reporter, you are an activist who is hoping to shape and change public opinion with your series.
Waitaminute…. Dan Baum opted out of carrying? That was one of the outcomes of the Gun Guys book??
Is it 100% that she even *really* had a gun in the first place?
Straw Bitch.
The unimaginable, abject stupidity that woman cloaks herself in on a daily basis is simply astounding. Have a bad day and you’re THAT worried you’d just stick a gun in your mouth?? I totally support this dip shit not having a gun. Ever.
I really wish that one of the intelligent Lady Gunners would write a rebuttal piece. “I bought a pistol, got training & feel safer now that I can defend myself if attacked. I discussed firearms safety with my children & nothing bad happened to any of us due to owning a handgun.” The End.
Do you think MS.would have the guts to publish a piece like that?
I’m sorry, but if even half of the drivel she wrote in both pieces is true, then she should surrender to the nearest institution for safe keeping. She prattles about how gun owners are the devil but then proceeds to be as negligent as possible with the gun that she bought. And irony of ironies, she makes it seem like the GUN was 100% at fault for her failings.
She seems to be a bit inconsistent in her worries. Freaks out because she left it in her purse a few feet from her son, who was playing video games, and apparently needs no permission to go digging in mom’s purse, to retrieve anything. Yet, left in her purse at a party with small children playing nearby it, she only has general worry. (THOSE kids could have easily not been trained to stay out of people’s stuff, and found it, only to start playing with it.)
She shows other problems too. In the first part, she’s in Starbucks thinking how easily that gun could harm the kids present in the shop. In the second one, she’s worried about telling her son, lest he take it and off himself with it, or she gets some bad news and decides to off herself with it. To be honest, we don’t know if she had any ammo for it, let alone loaded into it.
She chooses to remain willfully ignorant of how to safely use and store it, to show us how scary, dangerous, and evil owning a gun is…. or is it so she can make sure she stays afraid and fearful of it instead of realizing there is no reason to really fear it? She willfully let it scare her instead of learning how to safely use and carry it.
Now, did she really buy it and then sell it to an artist? How does she know that artist didn’t keep THAT gun for personal use instead of it being put into “a piece of art?” We have no evidence, other than her word, as a Brady-Campaign board member, who was afraid to hug her friends wearing it (and when she had to explain, probably got the comments she was hoping to hear about her “experiment”.) IF she did indeed buy it, it was only a prop to support her fears and opinions about owning one.
Where can I find the links to the other two parts of her story?
Did anyone see the interview that Huffpost Live did?
http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/heidi-yewman-gun-control-concealed-weapon-ms-magazine-second-amendment/51dec3fe78c90a4ed200002a
More to set anger, once again it seems to be a biased view, even the former cop they interviewed didn’t come off as too knowledgeable. Especially when he was asked if you are required to notify an officer when you are pulled over, seriously I couldn’t believe he didn’t know that one, I know that one.
The psychologist and what she has to say, not so great either.
.
Funny how she mentions about having to perhaps take a life. I hope that if god forbid it happens, the guy robbing her has the same thought. Most thugs don’t and won’t. Me, my Glock 30 will stay on my hip so can protect myself and my loved ones
If she really did do the things she claimed then she should be ashamed.
She put so many people at risk by being a very irresponsible gun owner. I am glad she no longer has her glock.
She is foolish to think her children will not visit homes that are armed.If those gun owners are as foolish as she is then her children are still at risk.
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