(Article changed on June 28, 2013 at 19:38)
(Article changed on June 28, 2013 at 19:33)
"On March 12, 2010, I was surrounded by big hairy men with guns on their hips, yelling at me as I led a protest against Starbuck's gun policy. Today, I'm surrounded by five-year-old boys sitting with their moms at the next table. Now I'm the one with a gun on her hip. The gun makes me more fearful than I could have imagined."
So begins "My Month With a Gun: Week One" a
three-part series, written by anti-gun violence author and activist Heidi
Yewman that debuted this week in Ms magazine.
After the NRA's Wayne LaPierre told the nation only good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns, Yewman says she "wondered what would it be like to be that good guy with a gun. What would it be like to get that gun, live with that gun, be out and about with that gun." Yewman, who is the author of Beyond the Bullet and a board member of the Brady Campaign and National Gun Victims Action Council (NGAC), bought a Glock 9mm handgun from a gun dealer four minutes from her home.
Yewman writes that she had only four rules for her month-long experiment in civilian armament: "Carry it with me at all times, follow the laws of my state, only do what is minimally required for permits, licensing, purchasing and carrying, and finally be prepared to use it for protecting myself at home or in public."
Any blogger or reporter who writes about gun safety has met the " 2A tsunami"--the throng of online commentators who post ethnic slurs, insults and threats in the name of their patriotism and Constitution rights. Online attacks against an NGAC staffer last month were so virulent--"Why are people with Jewish names at the root of most everything wrong with society today?"/ "Do you hate liberal gun grabbers? Do you want take revenge on them for vilifying you as a baby killing racist rednecks?"--they were blocked by Google.
The 2A backlash against Yewman was so retaliatory, it included publication of her home address and led to MS magazine's decision to scrap the rest of the series, says the New York Times . The attacks were reminiscent of gun advocates who posted the home addresses of editors and writers at The Journal News , where their children go to school and issued death threats because the paper revealed addresses of local handgun permit holders.
What angered gun lovers the most was how easy Yewman revealed the process of buying a gun to be. "The whole thing took 7 minutes. As a gratified consumer, I thought, 'Well, that was easy.' Then the terrifying reality hit me, 'Holy hell, that was EASY.' Too easy. I still knew nothing about firearms." Both the gun dealer who sold Yewman her Glock and a policeman she randomly asked for help in ascertaining if there were bullets in the chamber, knew she was walking around with a lethal weapon she knew nothing about.
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