4.  WAR MAY REDEFINE GUN CONTROL
    by Wendy McElroy 
    Special to TLE      http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/>     Issue 220

Despite the high emotions that surround war -- or perhaps because of them
-- people are focusing again on "normal" life. But what is normal
has shifted in ways both obvious and subtle. Consider how war has affected
just one issue: the debate over gun control.

For years, gun ownership advocates have agonized over how to make women
comfortable around guns. As
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:jqFBlyM0fBoC:www.helpnetwork.org
/frames/resources_factsheets_gunsinus.pdf+guns+women+%22United+States%
22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8> of 2000, 41.7% of men and 28.5% of women
reported having a gun in their household, and 39.2% of men but only 10% of
women personally owned a gun.

Reaching out to women and minorities has been a high priority of
organizations like the
http://www.nra.org/display_content/show_content.cfm?mod_id=59&id=0>
National Rifle Association, not merely to swell their ranks but also to
convert segments of society that have traditionally opposed the right to
own a gun.

Now, the outreach has become easier. As of 2002,
http://www.womensmemorial.org/StatisticsWIM.html> over 210,000 women
were on active duty within the military, over 150,000 were in the reserves.
A steep increase in the number of
http://www.militarywoman.org/homepage.htm> women in the military
means that an unprecedented number of Gen-Next women have overcome
their mothers' aversion to guns.

Non-military women also picked up guns. NRA spokeswoman Nance Pretto
reported that, in the wake of 9-11, women's enrollment in instructional
shooting classes increased fourfold from years before. And gun dealers
http://www.thedailytimes.com/sited/story/html/78102> reported a
sharp increase in women purchasing weapons.

The sense of insecurity caused by 9-11 was heightened as police officers in
the reserves left for active duty, depleting police departments. Some
politicians began to actively encourage women to protect themselves by
owning guns. When a serial killer was loose in Baton Rouge in the summer of
2002, Louisiana governor Mike Foster
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-lott080902.asp>
advised women "you have a right to get a [concealed] gun permit. ...
if you know how [to use a gun] and you have a situation with some fruitcake
running around, like they've got right now, it sure can save you a lot of
grief."

Foster received the predictable
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2002/0813b.html>
backlash of outrage from gun control advocates who suddenly sounded sexist.
Holley Galland Haymaker from the anti-gun group Louisiana Ceasefire argued,
"Maybe if you're a big, white guy who hunts all the time, it might do
some good. For a woman who is surprise attacked, having a gun is only
giving them [the attacker] another way to kill you."

I will ignore the racist implications of this remark and simply ask,
"why would a white guy who hunts be more competent with a gun than a
woman who is trained to use it?"

To judge from how strained their arguments have become, gun control
advocates realize they are losing the debate. It would be difficult to
escape this realization. Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives
passed H.R. 1036 -- the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act -- which
grants gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits resulting from their
products. The vote (04/09) was 285 to 140. The measure has now moved to the
Senate where it is expected to pass.

As Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) argued, "Manufacturers of legal products
should not live under the threat of litigation simply because their product
is misused... [W]e don't sue Ginsu when someone is stabbed to death with
their knife."

Again, the anti-gun arguments were shrill. A paper published by the Brady
Center, entitled http://www.bradycenter.org/> "Smoking Guns:
Exposing the Gun Industry's Complicity in the Illegal Gun Market",
openly accused the firearms industry of "actively and knowingly
allowing guns to be sold into the illegal market." In short, gun
manufacturers were publicly charged with criminal complicity.

Other gun control advocates are pushing to have guns declared as
"weapons of mass destruction (WMD)." For example, House Bill 1210
in Washington State defined a WMD as a "device, object, or substance
that a person intends to use to cause multiple human deaths." No
specific weapons were mentioned but the Seattle Times opened its March 15th
coverage of the Bill
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134653784_guns15m.html>
with the sentence, "An anti-terrorism bill has spurred debate among
lawmakers: Is a gun a weapon of mass destruction?" Possession would
have been a class A felony had the Bill passed with above-referenced
language. Many in the pro-gun rights camp view the WMD argument as
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/9/164624.shtml> an
indication of attacks to come.

The underlying facts of the gun debate remain much the same as before 9-11
and the war. The award-winning criminologist Prof. Gary Kleck
http://www.nationalreview.com/fitton/fitton092402.asp> states that
firearms are used defensively 2.5 million times a year. 48 percent of those
incidents involve women defending themselves; most of the time a shot is
not fired. The conclusion: women benefit from gun ownership.

What is changing, however, are the
http://www.oregonlive.com/living/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/living/104
8856391250440.xml> faces and attitudes of the debate. A growing number
of http://www.wnep.com/Global/story.asp?S=1224236> women feel
comfortable with guns and want them for self-defense. In response, anti-gun
advocates are using arguments that seem increasingly implausible such as
classifying guns as WMDs.

Gun ownership is just one of the issues over which we will stumble on the
way back to normal life. And, as people drink coffee and read newspapers in
the morning, they will discover that the war has influenced every aspect of
public debate, including the words we use to describe and redefine our
beliefs.
- - -

Visit my home page and blog at http://www.zetetics.com/mac> drop by
ifeminists.com http://www.ifeminists.com> For photo (05/02/02)
http://www.zetetics.com/mac/vesuvio.jpg>

---