Women in the NRA: it's not a new thing

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.

Gun Advocates Work On Suicide Prevention

Here is reason 87,099 why I love the gun community: the gun community finds solutions to problems. Solutions that can work. Solutions that are based on a laser-like focus on solving the problem without impacting people clumsily or infringing on their rights.

Gun control people talk a good game about reducing gun deaths but their approach is clumsy and, in the United States, ultimately doomed. They don't actually do anything useful. Their only suggestion is "more gun control". Well, we've already got a lot of useless gun control laws and most of it only impacts good folks.

The gun community is smart. Its leadership knows that the suicides, homicides and accidents are very different phenomena and can only be attacked successfully by attacking the distinct root causes of each.

Firearms Accidents Reduced By Voluntary Education

This was successfully done with firearms accidents and mostly without enacting onerous training requirements (although universal firearms safety training in school could be worthwhile). I remember being impressed when I got active in firearms politics that the firearms accidental death rate had dropped by nearly 40 percent between 1970 and 1990. I was even more pleasantly surprised to find that the rate had dropped to 600/year in 2010.

What Can We Do To Reduce Suicides?

In the past few years, gun rights leaders have been turning their attention to the problem of suicide by firearm. Gun control advocates like to conflate murders and suicides but in reality, 2/3 of firearms intentional deaths are suicides. In Washington state, the number is more like 80%, as our firearms murder rate is below the national average.

One of the organizations driving these efforts is the Second Amendment Foundation (link), an organization founded and led by Second Amendment supporting powerhouse Alan Gottlieb. A couple years ago, his organization joined with Washington state health professionals, the Seattle Police Department, the Washington State Department of Veteran Affairs, the Washington Arms Collectors organization and others to form a unique coalition (link). They lobbied the state legislature and obtained official support for this life saving coalition.

This weekend, I attended the Washington Arms Collectors show in Monroe and spoke with some amazing members of the Safer Homes Suicide Awareness coalition. The lady I spoke with was a great representative for the group...the stereotype is that people trying to prevent suicides are anti-firearms. This lady, however, said that she herself owns firearms and that her only interest is in convincing others to secure their firearms. The discussion also highlighted that the group distinguishes between firearms whose use is not anticipated and firearms kept more ready for the self defense possibility that none of us like to think about.

Not only was this a great thing to hear but the group is also giving away free firearms storage devices and other safety devices, such as the lockable pill bottle included in this picture. I just may have to volunteer with some of these efforts, now...

This business card sized information sheet teaches how to spot people having problems (sometimes a challenge in this stressed out age) and how to help.

To the Second Amendment Foundation, Washington Arms Collectors and their allies in the law enforcement and health care communities: well done!