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.