Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [c--t--y] at [LANCE.ColoState.Edu] (Cathy Smith)
Subject: LISTEN TO THE WOMEN -- by L. Neil Smith
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1993 00:41:32 GMT

                             LISTEN TO THE WOMEN
-
     A guy I know offers what he thinks is instruction in self-defense for 
women.  Among other things, he advises them to buy .22 caliber pistols because 
they're cheap to feed (true enough), easy to get proficient with (also true), 
and, in his opinion, adequate for killing or driving off a rapist, mugger, or 
burglar.  

     The trouble is, his opinions and advice are likely to get his students 
killed.  

     Another guy I know had a teenage accident which taught him everything we 
need to know about the adequacy of .22 rimfire.  His single action revolver 
fell from a bunk bed and fired a cartridge which was (regrettably) under the 
hammer, putting a slug into his midsection -- the part we all try to hit when 
we're practicing self-defense.  He didn't know he'd been hit until he saw a 
tiny drop of blood forming in the area of his solar plexus.  While his family 
were running around screaming, he called the doctor, got dressed, and waited 
for the ambulance.  

     Now this isn't just another entry in the Great Stopping Power Debate, an 
endless, mostly male ritual which never produces useful answers because it 
isn't really intended to.  (It serves purposes of its own which are perfectly 
respectable, if you follow cultural anthropology.)  For the moment, let's 
agree that, other things being equal, big guns are more effective than little 
guns and therefore it's reasonable to assume that an individual should learn 
to use the biggest weapon he or she can handle comfortably, safely, and 
efficaciously.  

     Which brings us to the meat of the question -- or rather the muscle.  You 
can't avoid the plain fact of physical anthropology that women have only about 
half the upper-body strength of men.  Yet all the women I shoot with manifest 
pragmatic interest in medium to large-bore centerfire weapons ranging from .38 
Special to .45 Auto.  Some outshoot me on a regular basis; most can do it at 
one time or another.  Not many lean toward .44 Magnum, .445 Supermag, or .45 
Winchester Magnum, but that's a far more accurate reflection of our physical 
differences -- and it's also another male thing, a matter of ceremonial 
accouterment.  

     My 98-pound wife shoots Hunter's Pistol with the same 6" S&W M610 I do, a 
big sixgun with a full-length lug under a heavy barrel, chambered in 10 m/m.  
For Falling Plate, she uses a Series 70 Gold Cup identical to mine.  The first 
handgun she ever fired was a 4" Security Six with full-powered .357 Magnum 
loads (at 25 yards, she kept every shot on the paper) and her deer rifle's a 
95 Marlin in .45/70 (I can't shoot the damn thing, it makes my eyes water).  
In practical circumstance, the same in which I rely on a 3" Detonics .45, she 
prefers a tiny 2" .38 Chief's Special, not because she's anybody's delicate 
flower, but because even minus the hardware, her purse (that of a full-time
wife, mother, and working woman) is already heavy enough to qualify as field
gear for Infantry Basic Training.

     But what's the point of all this?  Put simply, I'm confident that we're
going to win the Battle of the Second Amendment.  I've been so ever since
JoAnne Hall's column started showing up in _Guns & Ammo_, and that confidence 
was strengthened by Paxton Quigley's publication of _Armed and Female_, by the 
advent of _Women & Guns_, by Lenda Jackson's Patrick Henryesque speech from
the Denver capitol steps, and most recently by Nancy Bittle's appearance on
_Street Stories_.  

     Why should that make a difference?  Our species is divided into halves, 
each seeing the world a slightly different way, providing humanity as a whole 
with perspective each would lack without the other.  Survivalwise, it's worked 
well over the million-plus years we've been around.  My wife contends that men 
are strategically oriented and women tactical:  male gunfolk typically focus 
on history, the Constitution, the significance of the Second Amendment in 
maintaining individual liberty, social democracy, and Western civilization; 
females tend to focus on protecting themselves from mutants lurking at the 
edges of that civilization.  Both are correct in their priorities, neither is 
complete without the other.  

     Yet there are still gunshops today where women feel unwelcome, and whose 
proprietors, when they condescend to acknowledge females at all, invariably 
offer the "little lady" a .25 auto to defend herself with.  It seems, just as 
there are useless, gutless, mindless women who protest that they could never 
shoot anybody, even to preserve their own worthless lives or those of their 
children, just as there are cretinous cops (the same cops, in my experience, 
who get trounced by female competitors) who advise women not to arm themselves 
because some rapist, mugger, or burglar will only take their little gun away 
and hurt them with it, there are still male gun people who don't understand 
that trying to fight this battle without female help is exactly like closing 
one eye in combat.  

     The point I'm making here is not feminist (in fact that movement may be 
responsible for the remaining communication problems between the genders) but 
individualistic.  Nor is it directed at a majority of male shooters, mostly 
younger ones, who have gotten the point, but at a minority of fossilized 
idiots who haven't.  

     It's the women among us who've finally gotten the media to listen to us 
after decades of bigotry and persecution.  It's the women and their increasing 
willingness to provide for their own physical safety in a culture gone 
berserk, that are at the heart of the effort (of its concerns if not its 
politics) to make concealed carry of weapons legal.  It's the women who will 
provide the final nudge we need to secure our individual rights, end the 
insanity of victim disarmament, and recreate a culture where some value is 
placed on civility.  

     The least we can do is listen seriously, not treat them like retarded 
children when they try to help us by helping themselves.  We owe them the 
courtesy, when they're learning the craft, of offering them the same advice 
we'd give any male beginner, then let them make their own minds up about what 
they really need.

     They're going to do it anyway.
-
L. Neil Smith
Author:  THE PROBABILITY BROACH, THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE, HENRY MARTYN,
and (forthcoming in November, 1993) PALLAS
E-mail: [l--e--l] at [lobo.rmhs.colorado.edu]
Editor:  Lever Action BBS (303) 493-6674 (FIDOnet: 1:306/31.4)
Founder:  Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus
NRA Life Member

My opinions are, of course, my own.