I am surprised that many of you do not remember May 1999, when 5,000 or more gun owners showed up to demonstrate against the bad 1998 Mass gun legislation. Margery Eagan, from the Herald, did in fact berate gun owners for the way they dressed, even though there were many hundreds of supporters in ties because it was a work day, as follows:
Herald Writer Calls Gun Owners "Nuts,"
[SIZE=+2]Ignores How Guns Protect Women[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]Citizens Stereotyped as Irregular, Edgy, Hicksville Cowboys[/SIZE]
Massachusetts News
By Eric Darbe
May 21--Countless women rallied with 5,000 people on Boston Common Monday to defend gun rights and talk about how guns increase women's safety. But Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan--lauded as a voice for victims of domestic violence--ignored the women's-safety aspect of the rally and dismissed the people there as "nuts."
Eagan's Tuesday column, "Rally Proves Trigger Happy Crowd is Nuts," said of the thousands of people gathered on the Boston Common: "There was a distinct Ruby Ridge redux, the government-is-out-to-get-us feel to the event.... There was this I-wanna-be-a-suburban-cowboy mentality. Or, better yet, a hicksville cowboy. ... We took one good, last, hard look around Boston Common and realized: The gun nuts are nuts." (Eagan's column ran beside the Herald's news coverage of the rally on page 4, while The Boston Globe's report on the rally was placed in the B section, page 4).
Eagan expressed concern that the crowd was filled with "hundreds of American flags," and people wearing "black [NRA] baseball caps," "oversized belt buckles," T-shirts and tattoos. She also complained that she could find only one "black face" in the crowd.
Karen Macnutt, an attorney and Gulf War veteran who spoke at the rally, told Massachusetts News that she "saw red" when reading Eagan's report. "It was the most irrational, hate-filled piece of literature I've seen in a long while," said Macnutt. "I think that it was beneath her dignity as a professional journalist to write something like that. It was so shallow."
Eagan's Bigotry
Eagan ridiculed and trivialized an entire class of people simply because she is different from them, said Macnutt. Eagan also made fun of veterans who, said Macnutt, risked their lives so that we could have freedom of the press in this country. Eagan described the "hicksville"-cowboy crowd as people "way out there, somewhere off the Mass Pike or at the far reaches of 93. From towns with something to prove and lots of Amvets posts."
Veterans are entitled to respect, said Macnutt, adding that "the whole reason we have violence in this country is people do not respect each other and when we encourage public disrespect, such as with what Eagan wrote, we encourage violence."
Eagan should have listened to what was said at the rally and spent less time focused on her bigotry, said Macnutt, a former candidate for local and state office. Macnutt and other women who attended the rally told Massachusetts News that they found it interesting that Eagan ignored the fact that guns make life safer for women.
Concealed Gun Laws Benefit All Women
Margery Eagan has written extensively on the plight of abused women and how they face a constant threat from dangerous men sometimes aided by gaps in the law. In an October 1996 column, Eagan wrote: "Neither courts nor police can stop a determined killer ... or [assure] a woman's safety, even before dark, two blocks from her home--even in her home."
Yet Eagan didn't mention the speakers at the rally who presented data showing that all women are safer even if only a few carry concealed guns.
According to Macnutt, Prof. John Lott, who teaches criminal deterrence and law and economics at the University of Chicago, put it best in his address to the crowd.
Lott said that when women are attacked, "by far the safest course of action for someone is to have a gun." Women who behave passively when attacked are 2.5 times more likely to be seriously injured than a woman who has a gun when confronted by a criminal, said Lott.
Lott also documents in his 1998 book, More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press), "that rapists are particularly deterred by handguns."
Furthermore, reports Lott, concealed handguns don't just benefit the women who carry them. There is a "spill-over effect," he says. This means that when criminals know that more people might be carrying concealed guns in a certain area, they're less likely to commit crimes there. The risk, for them, is higher. As a result, Lott concludes, people who choose to carry a firearm "indirectly benefit other citizens."
David Kopel, Research Director of Colorado's Independence Institute, added to Lott's comments by explaining how thieves in America try to avoid contact with their victims because of the potential gun factor. This is in contrast to other countries where the right to own a gun for self-protection does not exist, said Kopel. There, burglars prefer to rob an occupied house (a "hot burglary").
"The security that you and that all the people of the gun-prohibition lobby in Massachusetts enjoy right now against worry of a 'hot burglary' happening in your home tonight is a security that you as gun-owners provide," Kopel told the rally's 5,000 participants. "(That's) because about half of the people in the United States have a firearm for protection, and fortunately the burglars don't know which ones."
Macnutt added: "As a woman, clearly we should have the ability to choose whether we want to resist or whether we want to submit to an attack. And, if we have the right to self-defense, do we not also have the right to an effective self-defense?"
Nancy Snow, Executive Secretary of the Gun Owner's Action League which sponsored the rally, told Massachusetts News: "We [GOAL] talk about a person's right to choose, and we say, we support a persons right to choose, [to carry a firearm]." Snow added that a woman has a right when attacked to choose to fight back. Because women are generally smaller and physically weaker than their assailant, Snow said, "the firearm is one tool that can absolutely even the odds.... And make sure that she is not a victim."
Snow also said that had she been asked, she could have introduced Eagan to some female victims of violence who were at the rally to voice their support for the right to bear arms.
One Woman
The only woman mentioned in Eagan's column was Barbara Anderson, director of Citizen's for Limited Taxation and Government. Anderson, according to a 1995 Eagan column, received "bomb threats--from firefighter's--during the Proposition 2 1/2 campaign." At the rally, Anderson told Eagan she carries a gun because she "can't stand the thought of being a victim."
Eagan gave some thought to this and "some damn persuasive GOAL speakers," as she put it in her Tuesday column. But, Eagan soon belittled the point that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens prevent many crimes from happening. In a later (and slightly revised) version of her Tuesday column, Eagan wrote: "We took one last hard look around Boston Common at the buckles and boots on some 5,000 men who seem unable to imagine life without great big, bad guns.... and came to our senses." Here, the women at the rally disappear.
![[wink]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/002.gif "Wink [wink]")
