(CT) Hundreds Put Down Bucks, Fire Machine Guns (SAS-Related)

[Drizzt]

Hundreds Put Down Bucks, Fire Machine Guns
November 4, 2001
By ERIC RICH, Courant Staff Writer

Once Halloween's over, there's never a good time to be a pumpkin. But that was particularly true Saturday in Simsbury, where the orange gourds found themselves on the losing end of four hours of unrelenting machine-gun fire.

At a firing range hard against Talcott Mountain, the gun-loving women's group Second Amendment Sisters offered enthusiasts and a few first-timers alike a chance to mow down pumpkins by the dozens.

Most any gun you've seen in a movie, you probably could have seen and heard - even fired - to help raise money to start local chapters at various state schools.

At 25 cents a round, belt-fed machine guns spitting out spent cartridges sounded like so many slot machines hitting three-of-a-kind all at once.

The group got $35 from Art Brickley, an insurance company account manager who wanted to know what it was like to shoot an AK-47 - the Russian-made weapon that is said to be the choice of the Taliban.

"You see 10-year-old kids holding them, and you want to know what it's all about," the West Hartford man said. "I wanted to see what our guys were up against."

Second Amendment Sisters was founded in January 2000 by women who felt that they were not being spoken for by the widely publicized Million Mom March, a gun-control demonstration that drew far fewer supporters than its name would suggest.

But not everyone on hand Saturday was a gun enthusiast.

Carol Franek of Wolcott came only at the urging of her sister and other family members. Franek conceded that she was more nervous than her 14-year-old son and his girlfriend - both of whom took turns.

She later said she would "probably not" be joining the Second Amendment Sisters.

But many others may. Lisa Akers, state coordinator for the gun group, said she's seen more interest in guns since Sept. 11.

In an odd way, that also helped bolster the numbers at the Second Amendment Sisters chapter at Mount Holyoke College, the only such chapter in the country.

Student Simone Irizarry said she felt compelled to display a flag when others at Mount Holyoke began protesting the war.

"There was a lot of anti-American crap going on at my school," she said.

That flag, it turned out, was the calling card that connected her to the college's chapter of the Second Amendment Sisters.

She and two other members of the chapter came to Connecticut Saturday for the fund-raising event that might one day lead to similar chapters at the University of Connecticut and Western Connecticut State University.

Akers said little effort has been made to organize the chapters. But she said that if students were receptive at Holyoke, a school not known for conservative politics, then they will likely be receptive anywhere

http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/hc-m...artnov04.story

[T.Stahl]

And I thought this was about the guys from Hereford.