Sexism in the NRA

In 1972, the federal law Title IX was passed with the intention of achieving gender equity in high school and collegiate sports. I find it disturbing that 40 years later, some still see this as a bad thing. For example, witness US Womens Soccer champion Brandi Chastain's experience at a Sacramento at an event honoring the 40th anniversary of Title IX.  (article)  Even today, media coverage of women in sports lags significantly behind the coverage of male sports.

If that grudging acceptance of women in sports is the status quo in other sports, you're probably thinking to yourself "I bet that barbaric NRA is even worse"! Let's take a look and see...

Here are a couple examples. On the left, is an article about Elizabeth Topperwein competing in the NRA's national matches in 1906. Wait, could that be right? Yes, it was in fact 1906 and this writeup notes that women had competed in other shooting matches for some time. In the picture on the right, Gertrude Beckstrom proudly celebrates WINNING the overall national pistol matches in 1957..

Yes but what about management roles? Surely the backward, benighted NRA wouldn't support women taking a leadership role in their organization. Well, except they did in 1949 when the Seattle area's late Alice Bull was elected to the NRA Board of Directors. 

The pictures above are from the book "NRA: An American Legend" (my review) and highlight the pride the organization has taken in supporting all those interested in shooting over the years, whether for sport or self defense. This has included a North Carolina NAACP chapter threatened by the KKK in the 1950s (link) and a Pink Pistols affiliate in Seattle in 2000 (link). In fact, I was a safety instructor for CeaseFear and a variety of gun rights organizations lent substantial support: the Second Amendment Foundation, Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Washington state's Gun Owners Action League, various shooting ranges.

Clearly, there's a lot more to the NRA's narrative and history that the simplistic media offer up to casual readers. I've included some further illustrations from the NRA's magazine American Rifleman below, in the hope that it will provide valuable information to some.Note that these photos were selected by opening a handful of issues over about a half hour...they are undoubtedly the tip of the iceberg.

This screen shot is from a December 1939 article by Dr. A. F. Bokman, describing the benefits his sons and daughter experienced as a a result of a rifle marksmanship program.

These photos are from the December 1951 editions Annual Meeting coverage

This photo from the November 1951 coverage of the national matches at Camp Perry illustrates that women competed very seriously decades ago.

As does this cover from September 1967.

So before you allow the news media to shape your opinion about an organization, please take the time to think about whether their agenda might shape what they tell you about it.

Letter to the Seattle Times about gun legislation

I am writing to provide some feedback about your opinion columns
about gun control this weekend, as well as the general tone of the
discussion. For your information, I am a moderate liberal Democrat in
most respects who also happens to be an NRA Life Member; I believe
that makes me a consistent liberal.

In general, I find the idea of firearms "discussion" in this country to be
an unfortunate oxymoron. Firearms owners possess the technical acumen
for real debate and a first person knowledge of the issues. Most gun control
advocates seem to fall more into the "guns are icky and we want all the
controls we can get" camp. Attempts to rebrand "gun control" to "gun safety"
will only have any veracity when the control side provides more data than
the equivalent of sex ed composed solely of "abstinence" instruction.
The firearms community reduced the fatal gun accident rate from 2500/year
around 1970 to about 600/year now, mostly through OUR initiative and
without significant legal requirements.

To reiterate and rephrase: we don't want to be talked at by those with no
knowledge any more than women wanted to be talked down to be
anti-choice extremists last year.

Having lived in 4 states and experienced a variety of gun controls first
hand, including their unintended consequences, I'd like to respond to
some editorials by Danny Westneat and Jenny Durkan in the Time,
this weekend.

I was most impressed by Danny Westneat's comments and I believe
that he and my representative Hope have a sincere interest in finding
intelligent discussion points. Where this breaks down is if HB 1588 includes
a requirement to record firearm type and serial numbers. A carefully
defined background check can be an excellent idea but legislation which
results in full firearms registration is unacceptable. That reading of
1588 would put it on par with California's requirement that records all
firearms transactions. This is not so much in regard to gun show transactions
as to private purchases between individuals.

An approach which could be much more acceptable to the firearms
community would be something like Iowa's pistol purchase permit,
which I experienced in the mid 1990s. It included a background check
good for a year or two pf purchases. A background check meets the
stated goals of Rep Hope, without venturing into firearms registration
territory. Another equivalent would be to exempt firearms purchases where
the purchaser possesses a valid WA state concealed pistol license.
I have personally only sold firearms to persons possessing a valid CPL,
which I believe meets my responsibility as a gun owner squarely.

I am frankly disappointed with Jenny Durkan's attempt to ingratiate
herself with the firearms community by saying "I grew up with shotguns"
and then have her go on to urge a ban on so-called "assault weapons". If Ms
Durkan grew up with guns, surely she knows that these firearms are
functionally equivalent to hunting firearms. The idea of banning rifles which are
used to kill less people than blunt objects and half the people killed with
hands and feet is patently ridiculous.

The US will never have its gun culture destroyed in the way that other
countries have. There are many millions of handguns in private hands
and tens of millions of semi-automatic rifles and normal capacity magazines
for them as well. The djinn is out of the bottle but gun rights advocates share
your concern in reducing violence.  Why not ask for our ideas?

If you ask us how instead of "splaining" to us what controls we have to
accept, we can work together to improve the situation. But we don't have
to accept any bad idea you come up with and we won't. Something like
a hundred thousand gun owners took the time to show up and protest
peacefully for our rights in state capitols around the country, two weeks
ago. We're not going anywhere.