From the Editor

Which come first—”safety” or “training?”

At first glance, the obvious answer, immortalized in cliché, is “safety first.”

But our first safety lessons are also our first training lessons—fire is hot, the street treacherous, the stick pointed. It may take one or two or a dozen “training” sessions, but eventually, most of us get the safety lesson.

The point of those early lessons is not that fire, streets and sticks are bad, simply that they require some careful negotiating, some thoughtful actions, and, indeed, some training, before we are to be entrusted with baking cookies, traveling to a neighbors or divining water. History and common sense teach us that one could learn safety around these items without training, but history also instructs that those forays into self-help can often be dangerous.

In our most recent survey, which Prof. Carol Oyster summarized for us in last month’s issue, the overwhelming majority (85%) of W&G readers responded that they had had some training in firearms use. A majority of women (48%) scored themselves in the “intermediate” category of training, while the majority of men (81%) put themselves down as “advanced” students.

I will leave it to certified sociologists to speculate on whether this is yet another odious division of men and women of which best-selling authors are so fond. (But I hereby copyright the title “Men Are From Advanced and Women Are From Intermediate,” just in case.)

I can make the argument that a generation after the draft was abolished and at least two generations after the ascendancy of the single parent household, the training field for firearms is pretty much gender neutral.

On the other hand, I could tell you that many of the men who read W&G are involved in firearms training—for men and women—and so it would make sense that their level of training is a notch higher.

Regardless of whether they are “intermediate” or “advanced,” however, the people reading this magazine are, as our surveys have demonstrated for the last ten years and the continued viability of this magazine suggests, interested in continuing their firearms education.

We are not, therefore, the idiots—dangerous idiots—you see on television, in movies and read about in books and sadly, the newspaper, misusing firearms, either criminally or “accidentally.”

It makes us almost physically tired to hear about how guns need to be smarter or safer, or, depending on elitist whims, smaller or larger, in order to be safe. In the Alice in Wonderland world of elitism, those in power are always the Red Queen, shouting “off with their heads,” but never satisfied with the results.

Whether you took your first lesson from a parent, a friend, a nationally-known gun guru, at a club or from a local certified trainer, you are probably enraged to hear that your training, and your exemplary record of safety, is not enough. And neither is the safety record and training of literally millions of other law-abiding Americans. At least that’s the view according to people who couldn’t honestly muster a check next to “basic” when scoring their firearms knowledge.

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing a local radio show with a host, who, after each and every break, announced proudly that he knew nothing about guns. Of course this didn’t stop him, or any number of the callers, from opining on guns, and especially “training.”

The subject of guns was hot in the media world, and the topic du jour was Littleton, but because the guest was editor of a magazine called Women&Guns, the focus of this exercise in airwave democracy, was children and guns, especially access and training.

(It is a particular peculiarity of the media—all the media—that when guns and women are combined, the focus often becomes children, as if male gunowners neither cared about, nor even had any kids themselves.)

Caller after caller were asked if they thought “kids should have guns,” to establish which side of the question they were on. (It is also a peculiarity of the media that “sides” are drawn as arbitrarily as Balkan maps.)

At first blush, you will be amazed to learn, almost everyone was against “kids having guns.” Certainly with the horror of the Littleton terrorism fresh in everyone’s minds, that was an understandable reaction.

As the questioning wore on, however, many were announcing that they thought responsible children, supervised by responsible adults, in sensible, safe environments, could be entrusted with firearms instruction. The recommended age at which this was viable varied with the callers. But mostsuggested the 14-16-year-old age bracket.

Without really saying so then, most of the callers were in favor of kids having guns, because most of these people, even the anti-gun ones, had figured something out, even if they couldn’t quite express it. What they knew, instinctively, even if they’d never touched a gun themselves, was that knowledge is power, and power is often safety. And they knew this and said it, even in a roundabout way, even if they couldn’t bring themselves to admit it.

Of those who were most adamant that children never so much as come in proximity to a firearm were a woman whose young nephew had been killed in a gun accident, and a woman whose husband hid—with her approval—his guns from her and his children.

A policeman felt only law enforcement and the military should have any access to any guns. And then there was the guy, wandering a bit, who started a long harangue about women, featuring the assertion that if I had ever fired a .45, I would soon give up any notion of personal protection with a firearm.

The last two, naturally, were the easiest to deal with. The gentlemen with the size fetish was told that while I had shot the .45, and was not a great fan, I was aware of women who were. I thought of petite Gila Hayes and her enthusiasm for the round, and anyway, I said, there were a number of other handguns out there that weren’t .45s that could protect any number of women and men.

The policeman was reminded, more in sorrow than in anger, that there were plenty of people in the world—for example, the Kosovars—who would have trouble with ONLY the military having guns. Somewhat more heatedly, and using the example of a break-in at my house several years ago, I said that while the incident ended without confrontation and the police arrived in under five minutes, I was still glad that I had a gun and a plan. He insisted that I could protect myself without a gun—and suggested pepper spray. Gentle reader, I’m afraid I snarled a bit as I said, “Well if it’s so great, why don’t YOU carry only pepper spray,” and our dialogue didn’t improve much after that. A number of subsequent callers were also uncomfortable with the policeman’s attitude, and were especially anxious about his “military only” notion.

The woman who had lost a family member was troubled and troubling. The talk show format is not one that encourages much substantive discussion, so it was difficult to ask questions—how had such a tragedy happened? Etc. This is the core of the most emotional argument in the anti-gunners lexicon: “If we save just one life, isn’t total abolition of privately held firearms (or whatever the argument is that day) justified?”

The answer, historically, logically, and, even emotionally, is No. The difficulty with the “one life” argument is that it never allows the opposite—what about the one life, perhaps the life of a loved one—that might have been saved if a firearm was present.

In Pearl, MS, last year, it was a responsible adult with a firearm who ended a young man’s rampage. In Edinboro, PA, it was another responsible gunowner who did the same. In Springfield, OR, it was UNARMED, but firearms-schooled, young men who ended Kip Kinkel’s murderousness.

I was greatly troubled, perhaps even horrified, by the woman who had guns in her home, but professed not to know where they were, and who avowed that they were hidden also from her children.

Even the anti-gun host was disturbed. “You don’t know for sure that they (the kids) don’t know where the guns are!” he thundered. And, he was right. “Out of sight, out of mind,” is a terrible, irresponsible way to live your life, and to risk the lives of your children.

That responsibility should start at home was pretty much agreed to by all the callers. It was heartening, too, that most still felt that decisions about firearms ownership should be left to individuals. And even that “kids and guns” was still a topic best left to parents.

“Safety” is, of course, a loaded word. But “training” should never be one.

Though these are difficult times, it is still possible for all of us who are gunowners to be not just ambassadors for sport, or philosophical idealists, but to be educators, and guardians of safety.