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Women and guns: Political action, physical surviva
WAGC
Member Posts: 81 ✭✭
Cover Story
Women and guns: Political action, physical survival
By Preston McConkie
Utah Weekly editor
Janalee Tobias had no idea what she was getting into when she decided to
point out the obvious: not all women support gun control.
Well, maybe it wasn't so obvious. Back in 1993 when Janalee, a
stay-at-home mom in her twenties with two toddlers, decided to write her
first-ever press release, it seemed every powerful female in politics had her
sites set on shooting down the second amendment. At the national, state and
local level there were Hillary Clinton, Utah Attorney General Jan Graham and
Salt Lake City Mayor DeeDee Corradini.
Corradini was using city funds to "buy back" weapons from anyone who'd
bring them in, then having the guns destroyed. She'd even tried to pass a city
law requiring a two-week wait on all firearm purchases. At her prodding, the
county commission was considering requiring registration of all firearms, and
a five-day waiting period on purchases.
Graham was doing what she did best: lobbying for laws she approved of
and giving speeches about how to protect kids. Guns, she insisted, were
dangerous to kids and didn't protect people. She would personally help launch
a failed ballot initiative to restrict guns.
The First Lady, along with Calif. Senator Diane Feinstein, U.S. Attorney
General Janet Reno, and Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders were talking about the
shame of several "children" a day being killed by guns (this was later shown
to consist mostly of teenaged gang members shot by each other or police),
giving impetus to movements that would result in spectacles like the so-called
Million Mom March, a gathering of approximately 100,000 women in Washington,
D.C., asking for radical gun control.
Nine years ago, Janalee herself wanted to believe things could get
better by passing certain laws.
"I wanted it to be true," she said. "So I tried to find out if it would
work."
With a bachelor's degree in communications, she knew how to do research.
She started making calls and looking up documents.
She learned a lot, but the most powerful image she remembers is an FBI
chart showing the crime rates of each state. She compared that with a chart of
which states had the toughest gun laws. There was an unvarying correlation:
Fewer guns, more crime.
All this happened years before Congress commissioned University of
Chicago Professor John Lott to study the issue, which resulted in a pro-gun
report on Capitol Hill and the best-selling book More Guns, Less Crime.
Janalee talked with a few friends. They were interested. They were
convinced. They decided the next thing to do was tell the media, "Not all
women want gun control."
She wrote a small press release announcing a protest and news conference
she would hold in front of the Salt Lake City offices. The Tribune ran a story
the morning of the protest, and supporters showed up. So did four television
news crews and reporters from several papers.
At a restaurant after the protest, sitting with friends and others who
had come to participate, Janalee was still amazed at the attention she'd
gotten. Maybe it really was big news that not all women thought the same.
Maybe it was big news that gun control wasn't an unquestionable cure for
crime. Her new allies were pleased with how she had connected the second
amendment with women's rights. They began to talk strategy, and Women Against
Gun Control was born.
"The original equal rights amendment is the Second Amendment," Janalee
likes to say now. "A century and a quarter before women had the right to vote,
they had the right to keep and bear arms. And having a gun makes a woman equal
to a man."
She hadn't been quite as eloquent during her first news conference, but
she'd made her point. Women started calling from around the state. Then from
out of state.
These days the letters, emails and phone calls come in from around the
world. The organization has chapters in all 50 states, most English-speaking
foreign countries, and a few others. Its vice president lives in Georgia. It
has its own web site (www.wagc.com). Its members have been to the White House
and on national television and radio broadcasts. Janalee has been interviewed
hundreds of times.
The course of her life has changed since that first news conference in
1993, and the course of Utah legislation has changed, too. When the State
Legislature passed a bill in 1996 to let citizens without criminal backgrounds
obtain licenses to carry concealed weapons, Governor Mike Leavitt threatened
to veto it. A petition drive and a visit to Capitol Hill by Janalee and
friends helped change his mind. Today, whenever the legislature contemplates
gun restrictions, the Utah Shooting Sports Council, the National Rifle
Association, and Women Against Gun Control, along with other groups, are at
the Capitol, holding politicians' feet to the Constitutional fire.
While crime has dropped in post-1996 Utah, it's multiplied in Janalee's
life. Eggs splatter against her house and car so often that she keeps a
special egg remover on hand. Her lawn has been poisoned. Her yard has had
trash thrown in it, and paintballs have been fired at her home.
The worst experience, though, was being labeled the president of a hate
group. In late 2000, she started getting calls asking, "Did you know you were
part of a hate group?"
The source was a CD called "Hate 2000" put out by the Simon-Wiesenthal
Center, which describes itself as "an international Jewish human rights
organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by fostering
tolerance and understanding ." (www.wiesenthal.com).
It was the only time Janalee really wondered if it was worth continuing
as an activist. But the Salt Lake news media - the same media that had given
her movement a beginning boost - paid attention, and soon it was a local and
regional headline that a girlish-voiced, stay-at-home mom who headed a grass
roots political cause was called a hater.
The stories resulted in a call from Simon-Wiesenthal's director, who
claimed it had all been a mistake. Yet a number of other grass roots
organizations - and even a Bar Mitzvah entertainer and a writer of patriotic
songs -- had somehow made it onto the list of hate groups. "Hate 2000" was
recalled and WAGC's name was removed, along with many others.
Janalee's faith in the media got a boost, and she continued with the
work.
In the meantime, the list of victories by Utah gun-rights supporters has
grown. To begin with these were positive victories, such as the new
shall-issue concealed carry laws, a law allowing schools to teach gun safety.,
and another preventing towns and counties from passing gun laws more
restrictive than the state's.
In years since, the victories have been largely defensive, with the
energy of most gun rights groups going to defeat bills such as one meant to
make people to keep guns locked up (and therefore of little use in an
emergency), or banning legally carried weapons from public areas like churches
and schools, places where many a criminal has staged a mass shooting.
Janalee knows she's the head of just one organization among many that
seeks to preserve Second Amendment rights. She's never written legislation,
just helped it through; she can't afford to hire lobbyists, but donates time
along with her sisters in the WAGC. She wants credit to be given to more
organizations and people than fit into a news story, and worries about getting
personal credit for what they've done.
She also points to other WAGC members, such as Susan Gonzales of
Jacksonville, Florirda. Susan appeared on Good Morning America in late 2000
along with a handful of women who supported gun rights, and a larger group of
women whose children had suffered tragedies involving guns.
Susan was there because she'd used a pistol to defend the lives of
herself and her husband in 1997 against three men who invaded their home and
started shooting. She and her husband were both shot twice, yet Susan wasted
five bullets shooting over the intruders' heads before putting two small,
.22-caliber slugs into one of the invaders.
"I used to dislike guns," Susan told the Utah Weekly. "I didn't want
them in the house. I was worried that our teenagers would do something with
them - commit a crime, commit suicide. Because sometimes people make bad
choices, no matter how well they're raised."
Susan had also thought she would "have a heart attack and fallen down
dead" if she was ever robbed. But when her husband started fighting the
invaders hand-to-hand, she didn't faint or run. She got hold of the only
unlocked weapon in the house and drove the attackers out.
Recovered from chest wounds that kept her in the hospital for a month,
Susan carries a gun - a 9mm, not a .22 - wherever she goes. Even to mow the
lawn. One intruder died, another is serving a mandatory life sentence, but the
third finishes his five-year sentence in just a week. Police have warned her
for years about her former attackers trying to hire a hit on her and her
husband.
"It's a woman's right to be able to defend herself," she said. "I don't
think I should even have to have a permit, because the Second Amendment
doesn't say anything about a permit."
She still keeps guns out of the reach of kids and grandkids. She still
believes you can't rely just on training to protect kids from guns. But she
wouldn't be without them, and as a member of Women Against Gun Control she
spends her time trying to convince other ladies to arm themselves.
It's a mission she couldn't have joined until brutal reality changed her
world view.
"I used to look at guns like most women do. They think like moms - think
about what their kids might do with the guns. Now I think of guns as a way to
stay alive, a way to keep my family alive."
It's the same motivation that moves Janalee.
"Moms aren't supposed to be fighters. But you've never seen a fight 'til
you've seen a mom defending her kids. And that's why I have a gun - to protect
my kids, protect my husband."
And that's why she keeps on with the cause, despite the eggs on her car,
the hate calls, the "Million Moms" spitting on her when she marched in a
counter-rally, and the accusation that she herself is a hater. To her, it's a
personal fight for the lives of her family, and freedoms she doesn't want to
lose.
The Second Amendment IS our Homeland Security
Women and guns: Political action, physical survival
By Preston McConkie
Utah Weekly editor
Janalee Tobias had no idea what she was getting into when she decided to
point out the obvious: not all women support gun control.
Well, maybe it wasn't so obvious. Back in 1993 when Janalee, a
stay-at-home mom in her twenties with two toddlers, decided to write her
first-ever press release, it seemed every powerful female in politics had her
sites set on shooting down the second amendment. At the national, state and
local level there were Hillary Clinton, Utah Attorney General Jan Graham and
Salt Lake City Mayor DeeDee Corradini.
Corradini was using city funds to "buy back" weapons from anyone who'd
bring them in, then having the guns destroyed. She'd even tried to pass a city
law requiring a two-week wait on all firearm purchases. At her prodding, the
county commission was considering requiring registration of all firearms, and
a five-day waiting period on purchases.
Graham was doing what she did best: lobbying for laws she approved of
and giving speeches about how to protect kids. Guns, she insisted, were
dangerous to kids and didn't protect people. She would personally help launch
a failed ballot initiative to restrict guns.
The First Lady, along with Calif. Senator Diane Feinstein, U.S. Attorney
General Janet Reno, and Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders were talking about the
shame of several "children" a day being killed by guns (this was later shown
to consist mostly of teenaged gang members shot by each other or police),
giving impetus to movements that would result in spectacles like the so-called
Million Mom March, a gathering of approximately 100,000 women in Washington,
D.C., asking for radical gun control.
Nine years ago, Janalee herself wanted to believe things could get
better by passing certain laws.
"I wanted it to be true," she said. "So I tried to find out if it would
work."
With a bachelor's degree in communications, she knew how to do research.
She started making calls and looking up documents.
She learned a lot, but the most powerful image she remembers is an FBI
chart showing the crime rates of each state. She compared that with a chart of
which states had the toughest gun laws. There was an unvarying correlation:
Fewer guns, more crime.
All this happened years before Congress commissioned University of
Chicago Professor John Lott to study the issue, which resulted in a pro-gun
report on Capitol Hill and the best-selling book More Guns, Less Crime.
Janalee talked with a few friends. They were interested. They were
convinced. They decided the next thing to do was tell the media, "Not all
women want gun control."
She wrote a small press release announcing a protest and news conference
she would hold in front of the Salt Lake City offices. The Tribune ran a story
the morning of the protest, and supporters showed up. So did four television
news crews and reporters from several papers.
At a restaurant after the protest, sitting with friends and others who
had come to participate, Janalee was still amazed at the attention she'd
gotten. Maybe it really was big news that not all women thought the same.
Maybe it was big news that gun control wasn't an unquestionable cure for
crime. Her new allies were pleased with how she had connected the second
amendment with women's rights. They began to talk strategy, and Women Against
Gun Control was born.
"The original equal rights amendment is the Second Amendment," Janalee
likes to say now. "A century and a quarter before women had the right to vote,
they had the right to keep and bear arms. And having a gun makes a woman equal
to a man."
She hadn't been quite as eloquent during her first news conference, but
she'd made her point. Women started calling from around the state. Then from
out of state.
These days the letters, emails and phone calls come in from around the
world. The organization has chapters in all 50 states, most English-speaking
foreign countries, and a few others. Its vice president lives in Georgia. It
has its own web site (www.wagc.com). Its members have been to the White House
and on national television and radio broadcasts. Janalee has been interviewed
hundreds of times.
The course of her life has changed since that first news conference in
1993, and the course of Utah legislation has changed, too. When the State
Legislature passed a bill in 1996 to let citizens without criminal backgrounds
obtain licenses to carry concealed weapons, Governor Mike Leavitt threatened
to veto it. A petition drive and a visit to Capitol Hill by Janalee and
friends helped change his mind. Today, whenever the legislature contemplates
gun restrictions, the Utah Shooting Sports Council, the National Rifle
Association, and Women Against Gun Control, along with other groups, are at
the Capitol, holding politicians' feet to the Constitutional fire.
While crime has dropped in post-1996 Utah, it's multiplied in Janalee's
life. Eggs splatter against her house and car so often that she keeps a
special egg remover on hand. Her lawn has been poisoned. Her yard has had
trash thrown in it, and paintballs have been fired at her home.
The worst experience, though, was being labeled the president of a hate
group. In late 2000, she started getting calls asking, "Did you know you were
part of a hate group?"
The source was a CD called "Hate 2000" put out by the Simon-Wiesenthal
Center, which describes itself as "an international Jewish human rights
organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by fostering
tolerance and understanding ." (www.wiesenthal.com).
It was the only time Janalee really wondered if it was worth continuing
as an activist. But the Salt Lake news media - the same media that had given
her movement a beginning boost - paid attention, and soon it was a local and
regional headline that a girlish-voiced, stay-at-home mom who headed a grass
roots political cause was called a hater.
The stories resulted in a call from Simon-Wiesenthal's director, who
claimed it had all been a mistake. Yet a number of other grass roots
organizations - and even a Bar Mitzvah entertainer and a writer of patriotic
songs -- had somehow made it onto the list of hate groups. "Hate 2000" was
recalled and WAGC's name was removed, along with many others.
Janalee's faith in the media got a boost, and she continued with the
work.
In the meantime, the list of victories by Utah gun-rights supporters has
grown. To begin with these were positive victories, such as the new
shall-issue concealed carry laws, a law allowing schools to teach gun safety.,
and another preventing towns and counties from passing gun laws more
restrictive than the state's.
In years since, the victories have been largely defensive, with the
energy of most gun rights groups going to defeat bills such as one meant to
make people to keep guns locked up (and therefore of little use in an
emergency), or banning legally carried weapons from public areas like churches
and schools, places where many a criminal has staged a mass shooting.
Janalee knows she's the head of just one organization among many that
seeks to preserve Second Amendment rights. She's never written legislation,
just helped it through; she can't afford to hire lobbyists, but donates time
along with her sisters in the WAGC. She wants credit to be given to more
organizations and people than fit into a news story, and worries about getting
personal credit for what they've done.
She also points to other WAGC members, such as Susan Gonzales of
Jacksonville, Florirda. Susan appeared on Good Morning America in late 2000
along with a handful of women who supported gun rights, and a larger group of
women whose children had suffered tragedies involving guns.
Susan was there because she'd used a pistol to defend the lives of
herself and her husband in 1997 against three men who invaded their home and
started shooting. She and her husband were both shot twice, yet Susan wasted
five bullets shooting over the intruders' heads before putting two small,
.22-caliber slugs into one of the invaders.
"I used to dislike guns," Susan told the Utah Weekly. "I didn't want
them in the house. I was worried that our teenagers would do something with
them - commit a crime, commit suicide. Because sometimes people make bad
choices, no matter how well they're raised."
Susan had also thought she would "have a heart attack and fallen down
dead" if she was ever robbed. But when her husband started fighting the
invaders hand-to-hand, she didn't faint or run. She got hold of the only
unlocked weapon in the house and drove the attackers out.
Recovered from chest wounds that kept her in the hospital for a month,
Susan carries a gun - a 9mm, not a .22 - wherever she goes. Even to mow the
lawn. One intruder died, another is serving a mandatory life sentence, but the
third finishes his five-year sentence in just a week. Police have warned her
for years about her former attackers trying to hire a hit on her and her
husband.
"It's a woman's right to be able to defend herself," she said. "I don't
think I should even have to have a permit, because the Second Amendment
doesn't say anything about a permit."
She still keeps guns out of the reach of kids and grandkids. She still
believes you can't rely just on training to protect kids from guns. But she
wouldn't be without them, and as a member of Women Against Gun Control she
spends her time trying to convince other ladies to arm themselves.
It's a mission she couldn't have joined until brutal reality changed her
world view.
"I used to look at guns like most women do. They think like moms - think
about what their kids might do with the guns. Now I think of guns as a way to
stay alive, a way to keep my family alive."
It's the same motivation that moves Janalee.
"Moms aren't supposed to be fighters. But you've never seen a fight 'til
you've seen a mom defending her kids. And that's why I have a gun - to protect
my kids, protect my husband."
And that's why she keeps on with the cause, despite the eggs on her car,
the hate calls, the "Million Moms" spitting on her when she marched in a
counter-rally, and the accusation that she herself is a hater. To her, it's a
personal fight for the lives of her family, and freedoms she doesn't want to
lose.
The Second Amendment IS our Homeland Security
Comments
Death to Tyrants!!!
Jesus Christ believed in the right to keep and bear arms, Luke 22:36.
-Gunphreak