Guns and Women
Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs
ancy Reagan had one next to the bed, and before you know it, Barbie's wardrobe may include one. The pearl-handled hairbrush on the dressing table ofAmerican women may soon be joined by a...
...But even more, one can appreciate how learning to use a firearm in one of those gun-harboring households can give women a sense of power— an equal footing...
...The pearl-handled hairbrush on the dressing table ofAmerican women may soon be joined by a pearl-handled revolver...
...The rationale of the campaign is that gun ownership empowers women...
...Good sense returned as I handed back the gun...
...One can well understand that this argument might appeal to women whose viewing of primetime television drama highlights their victim role...
...As Americans are persuaded by Contract-WithAmerica Republicans that they cannot depend on government to do anything right, women as well as men may be ever more oriented toward a "do it yourself" mode of protection...
...Putting my finger on the trigger did give me a powerful feeling...
...for a moment I felt transformed from effete intellectual to the "Wonder Woman" hero of my comic book reading years...
...My own puny experience handling a gun a few years ago offered me an insight...
...The gender gap that many feminists believed was to help us achieve a kinder, gentler government has considerably narrowed...
...Chenoweth and Representative Linda Smith of Washington have stated that they have met with militia representatives, whose membership includes a good percentage of women...
...The National Rifle Association (NRA) is plunging ahead with a lobbying effort to persuade women in Middle America to become pistolpacking mamas, according to another Wall Street Journal article...
...It might not take long before they seize the ideas of the feminist movement and plan a "Take Our Daughters to the Firing Range Day...
...agent...
...Campaign rhetoric urges women to fight crime firsthand: "Refuse to Be a Victim...
...Even more important than the fact of gun ownership by women is the gun imagery in the minds and hearts of some American women legislators...
...But empowerment is in the air...
...One of them, Helen Chenoweth of Idaho (described as a soft-voiced grandmother by the Wall Street Journal), symbolically displays a stick of dynamite alongside the "Contract With America" that she and a number of first-time women members of Congress support...
...To some, the NRA may seem like a strange group to promote this cause, but women are surfacing in the leadership of the 3.5 million member organization, including its first woman president, Marian P. Hammer, and its top lobbyist, a Smith College graduate named Tanya Metaksa, who operates a computer exchange with the catchy name of "Bullet 'N Board...
...In Idaho, for example, of the state's five hundred militia activists, one-third are women...
...Gun sellers complain that there are no big bucks to be made yet from women, and the NRA reports that "only" 15 to 20 percent of their members are women...
...A clear majority of white women (55 percent) voted for Republican congressional candidates in the 1992 election...
...I had a student who was an F.B.I...
...On a whim I asked her if I could hold her pistol...
...After dutifully unloading the bullets she handed it to me...
Vol. 42 • September 1995 • No. 4
