NRA Group Wants to Arm the Gay Community

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NRA Group Wants to Arm the Gay Community - Jeff Brady November 8, 2001Listen! A group of National Rifle Association instructors in Portland wants sexual minorities to arm themselves. The theory is that if would-be hate crime perpetrators knew a sizable percentage of the gay community was armed, the number of such crimes would drop. Jeff Brady reports.On the surface, the gay community and the NRA don't have much in common. Brown: Well, I like breaking stereotypes Vancouver resident Michael Brown is an NRA certified instructor and he's a member of a group called "The Pink Pistols." The organization's motto is "Armed gays don't get bashed." Brown joined about a year ago and says the gay community and the NRA have more in common than you might think. Brown: I feel like gun owners have learned a lot from the gay rights movement. You know, there's been so much demonization of gun owners lately. I think it's really important for us to emulate the gay rights movement-specifically we need to come out of the closet and let people know it's their neighbors and their relatives and their doctors and lawyers who are the gun owners. We're not a bunch of criminals or terrorists, or domestic abusers, as the anti-gun people would have you believe.Brown says you don't have to be a sexual minority to be a member of the Pink Pistols-just gay-friendly and a supporter of the second amendment. Brown works with another group called the Portland Firearms Training Team. Some Multnomah County gun enthusiasts created it fifteen months ago to teach other people how to safely handle firearms. John McEnroe is a volunteer with the group.McEnroe: Everybody considers NRA to be flannel-shirted, right-wing nut cases who would pick on anything that moves. We don't! We're just like you and everybody else out there. We don't like it when minorities are picked on because we're a minority. McEnroe says his group welcomes all people interested in protecting themselves by owning a gun.McEnroe: And this was just a way to empower people of the gay persuasion to take a little bit of control over their own safety.So far, McEnroe says efforts to attract more sexual minorities haven't been very successful, but he hopes that will change. Meantime he and Pink Pistols member Michael Brown continue to teach gun safety to anyone who will listen.Instructor: Number oneStudents: Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.Instructor Yes! Number two... Students: Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot. Instructor: Beautiful! Students: Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use. Instructor: That's terrific! Thank you very much!After several hours of classroom training and some practice with plastic guns, Michael Brown assists student Ilene O'Connor as she takes her first shots on the firing range.Brown: Now reach out there and pick up that revolver and close the cylinder.. Go ahead and dry fire it now... just pull the trigger back all the way, slowly... trying to keep your sights aligned on the target. (click).Then Brown shows O'Connor how to load the gun. She points at a large sheet of white paper about 50 feet away.O'Connor: (shot fired) Did I hit it?Michael Brown: No, you didn't hit the target but that's real common on a double action revolver. There's so much motion going on there while you're trying to keep those sights steady that's a very difficult thing to do.After O'Connor and her fellow students get used to their guns, they begin to fire more frequently, hitting the broad targets more often. Not everyone in the gay community thinks it's a good idea for sexual minorities to arm themselves. Roey Thorpe with Basic Rights Oregon says she'd rather work to create a safer world where hate crimes are less likely to occur.Thorpe: What keeps people safer is changing other people's minds rather than carrying weapons yourself.Thorpe says she understands why individuals might want to carry guns as the number of hate crimes increases, but she calls that short sighted. Thorpe: I think we have to look at the bigger picture-even though it means that those of us who are advocating for equality and justice are needing to be very brave in terms of our own personal safety. The important thing is we know that in living lives that are more open and more honest that we're contributing to making Oregon and our society as a whole a better place.Pink Pistols member Michael Brown says he's also working to create a safer place in his own way by fostering understanding between sexual minorities and more traditional NRA members.Brown: Some of our male, you know, heterosexual members will go out of their way to say, "But I'm not gay! You know, I like guys but I'm not gay." And that's not really necessary. They know that now. The Portland Pink Pistols chapter hasn't been officially established yet but a similar group in Washington state, called "Cease Fear", has been around for a couple of years. http://www.opb.org/nwnews/trans01/nragay.asp