I suppose I should be delighted that chicagotribune.com has published a positive article about women shooting guns—especially as I just posted a QOTD on the Windy City’s culture, political, practical and unconstitutional antipathy to the Second Amendment. I just can’t get past the condescending tone of this feature on the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Women in the Outdoors outreach program. Oh, and it’s sexist. I mean, would a male writer get away with this lede: “‘OK, I’m looking at how many boobs I can see,’ Diane Drall said . . .

We were a bit startled. But we stood obediently as Drall checked to make sure we didn’t have low-cut necklines, and she explained herself.

When a handgun is fired, it ejects the bullet’s extremely hot casing, she said. “If a piece of brass reaches you and it goes down your bra,” she said, “it’s not going to kill you, and it may not leave a scar, but it can hurt.”

Especially when the shooter leaps around and muzzles everyone with a hot gun. I guess it’s sisterhood over safety. And speaking of PC, scribe Barbara Brotman seems a bit concerned that her newfound respect for shooters and shooting will look too gun-clingy for her paper’s liberal lapdogs.

An urban Chicagoan, however, might wonder why [Jenny Middleton, daughter Hannah above] would do something like this. To many of us, the world of hunting and guns is foreign, and the folks who inhabit it, strangers.

That’s why.

It’s a way to try an activity that is completely unfamiliar, probably frightening, possibly off-putting, and in the middle of a major political and cultural debate on gun control. It’s an opportunity to meet people who might think differently than you do, and to find that you like them anyway.

Pro-gun folks are likable! How great is that! Notice that that Ms. Brotman is not saying she’s changed her mind about anything firearms-related. Or that her readers should re-evaluate their knee-jerk attitude towards guns and gun rights.

Yeah, yeah I get it: this is how gun rights guys and gals get the antis to ante-up at the reality table and maybe even swap the cards that they’ve been dealt by the agit-prop progressives. Or something like that. Or something like this:

And then we faced the targets, held our guns straight out in both hands and fired.

Maybe snapping a magazine into a Smith & Wesson .22, chambering the bullet, taking careful aim and firing shouldn’t feel utterly cool.

But it pretty much does.

Methinks she enthuses too little. And needs to think about gun rights a bit more.

At the day’s end, Nina and I headed back to our city lives. The day after she hung out with folks in the NRA, she was out protesting NATO.

But she had proudly brought home her air rifle target, riddled with holes.

See the contradiction? Me neither.

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23 COMMENTS

  1. Pecatonica is no where close to Chicago, it is over 100 miles away, stop bringing up Chicago just because something happens in Illinois.

  2. I do like how they word the conclusion in such a way as to imply that city life cannot include guns in any way. Guess what? It used to, all the time. Kids in NYC could take their rifles to their schools to practice shooting in the basement ranges, in the 60s! And guess what violent crime rates were like?

  3. The real implication by the conclusion, I fear, is that shooting is a fantasy activity that should be reserved for special occasions under strict, authoritative control. Going back to the city was metaphorical for getting back to “reality.”

  4. If something is done by women or minorities that encroaches upon the real or perceived domain of the “traditional white males” then the mass media will often support it. Rather childish I think. Much of the mass media supports the agenda of destroying traditional social values. It is probably only a matter of time before a radfem, with the usual personality disorder, writes a loony piece that the mass media publishes advocating gun ownership should only be by women.

    RF, btw, it is ok for a women writer to write anything sexist (and rude) and get away with it. Women are not held to the same adult accountability standards as men though they are given by law and social support the gift of special class sex-based privilege.

    A University’s Shame: How Brown betrayed one of its students
    http://brown-spectator.com/2012/05/a-universitys-shame-how-brown-betrayed-one-of-its-students/

    • This is one circumstance where the American Matriarchy can work in favor of the RKBA.

      If the NRA sold the expansion of gun rights as a women’s rights issue, it would be like a laser guided bomb dropped into the ammunition magazines of the Battleship Brady. The falsehood of their philosophy would go up in flames like a fireworks factory fire.

      Picture the feminist lobby doing our dirty work for us as they cut the Brady Bunch, MAIG, and VPC to ribbons….while in the background, HR 822 and similar legislation passes for the benefit of us all.

      • It might work for us in the short term. In the long term, I’d be concerned with lots of heavily medicated modern depressed angry women owning guns. “No miss, this is my parking space since I was here first”. Bang.

  5. Sorry to get off topic, but…

    Images don’t appear to be loading for me any longer. Attempting to open an image (Right-click > Open image in new tab) gives me a 403 Forbidden error. This seems to be happening on multiple posts for me.

  6. Well ok it is sort of a back handed piece in a way, but it is some what positive. baby steps….

  7. I went to the Chicagotribune website and read the whole article. I thought it was a good piece. I liked the one woman that was quoted as saying “I’m pretty ambivalent,” said Ada Thompson, 59, of Loves Park. “I’m not crazy about guns. But I think I should know how to use one if I ever need one.”

    She clearly gets it on a basic level, even if she has some reservations.

  8. “…scribe Barbara Brotman seems a bit concerned about her newfound respect for shooters and shooting would look to liberal lapdogs.”

    That sentence doesn’t parse. What were you trying to say?

  9. I’ve said it a million times…

    When it’s women shooting guns, it’s a good thing they are in this crazy world.

    When it’s men shooting guns, it’s a question of his stability and social behaviors that may or may not make him a domestic terrorist.

  10. So, uh, how many boobs did she see? I assume that is what she meant by “looking at how many boobs I can see.” Although the sentence doesn’t really make sense to me. Kind of like a scrub leaning out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride “trying to holler” at TLC.

  11. Perfectly acceptable parsing for us surthern folk. English is my second language, my first is Mississippian. I was born in Texas, so you might can figure out why I have a language impediment. I think what the woman is trying to get across is ; gun toting, bible thumping, far right christian fundamentalist red necks are now some her best friends. Even the mayor of Chicago has admitted guns don’t kill people, liquor stores do, especially in hot weather.

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