Gay Firearms Group Takes Aim at Stereotypes

[Drizzt]

Gay Firearms Group Takes Aim at Stereotypes
DATE: 7/16/01

Pink Pistols members train in the proper use of weapons. They say they want to challenge the assumption that gays and lesbians are anti-gun.

Tall, sandy-haired Brian Cooper of West Hollywood took a Glock semiautomatic handgun one recent Sunday and blasted away at a torso-shaped target and an array of vivid human stereotypes. Cooper was at the shooting range with the Pink Pistols--a gay-lesbian group that offers its members firearms training and its foes a target for vituperative political fire.

After sending a clip of 9-millimeter bullets through targets and into spindly yellow scrub at the Americana 1800 Adventure Club north of Santa Clarita, Cooper pulled off a pair of sound-muffling ear protectors and ambled under a breezeway to relax with his significant other, Richard Best, amid the racked rifles and stacked ammo boxes.

"When I was younger, I shot a .22 [caliber] rifle, but the Glock has quite a different kick. I have to get used to it," the 36-year-old Cooper said, flexing his shooting hand as his colleagues in the group paused to reload. Barely a month old and with only 12 members, the Los Angeles chapter of the Pink Pistols is but a speck on the recreational-political landscape, but it stands to challenge assumptions that the gay community is marching in lock-step toward more restrictive gun control.

The Pink Pistols started last year in Boston, where founder Doug Krick, a 30-year-old computer engineer, said he and a circle of friends were stirred to action by an article by Jonathan Rauch, a National Journal senior writer and commentator who often addresses issues of interest to the gay community.

In a piece posted March 13, 2000, on http://www.salon.com, Rauch expressed alarm over rising anti-gay hate crimes and called on gays to arm themselves in self-defense. He even suggested the new group's name, which Krick and his friends readily adopted. "We started out with a bunch of friends who wanted to go out and go shooting," Krick said. "Then it was, what else can we do? Let's rate some political candidates."

Shooting Group Gets Political

The Pink Pistols soon tussled with Massachusetts legislators over gun control bills, drawing publicity that touched a nerve among pro-gun activists elsewhere, and soon more Pink Pistols chapters sprang up. In California, the group has opposed legislation requiring the licensing of handgun buyers.

Krick said there are now about 300 members in Indiana, Texas and Arizona. Not all the members are gay, such as a leader of an Arizona chapter, Krick said, who calls himself "painfully vanilla and hetero."

"We're here for the purpose of breaking some stereotypes, [two being] the gay community as anti-gun and the gun community as anti-gay," Krick said.

There's Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood), for one, long a fervent gun control advocate, who scoffed at the group. "It's a lot of hype and scam," Koretz said. "I would be shocked if any member of our community is a member of that group. It sounds like a front for the NRA."

But openly gay state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) tempered any criticism, pointing out that gay-lesbian groups are a cross-section of America, after all.

"If they're simply about affinity--we're interested in our own self-defense and target practice and so on--that's fine, but I hope they're not going to try to convince the community that carrying a gun makes you safe, because it doesn't."

Libertarian Party spokesman George Getz said his party promotes the gay pro-gun group in its publications.

"We're proud of the Pink Pistols," Getz said. "Crooks and murderers don't agree with gun control, which is why people need to have guns to defend themselves."

Back at the rural shooting range north of Santa Clarita, where the buzz of cicadas rises as soon as the thunder of gunfire echoes off into the distance, Los Angeles Pink Pistols organizer Tony Assenza was getting ready to signal for another round of live-fire training.

Assenza, a 48-year-old advertising copywriter and competition pistol shooter, is straight, but he helped launch the group because his gay and lesbian friends are interested in shooting. He lets the Pink Pistols shoot as his guests at the private Americana range, where he is a member, and he offers the use of his collection of firearms and supplies ammunition.

Best watched Cooper pick up a .45-caliber pistol, after telling Assenza that the 9-millimeter felt too light in his large hands.

"For me, it's a personal safety issue," Best said. "I think I'd be safer with a weapon in the house."

Sue Peabody, a printing sales representative from Valley Village, slipped a magazine into a purse-sized .25-caliber semiautomatic that she bought several years ago, fearing what she called an aggressive prowler. Now she enjoys an outing to the range as "a recreational, stress-relieving thing."

Not that she's gung-ho gun-obsessed, she hastened to add.

"I just don't understand why the gun lobby doesn't like background checks," she said. "I don't see what the big deal is to wait two weeks to get your gun."

Her partner, Lisa Costanza, a Valley Village real estate agent, said she enjoys the mental exercise of shooting her .357 magnum revolver.

"It's a discipline the way you have to time everything and the way you anticipate a shot, control your breathing and everything," Costanza said. "Some people think it's a big macho thing, but it's not."

Costanza said people react with more curiosity than condemnation when they learn of her hobby.

"I've never had anybody say, 'Oh my God, that's terrible, you shouldn't own a handgun,' " Costanza said. "Usually people say, 'I can't own one, I have kids in the house.' "

Assenza, who spread out a smorgasbord of firepower--9-millimeter semiautomatics, .38 specials, .45s--said he was pleased with the way novice shooters Best and Cooper were taking to their lessons. But then, he said, he has found that most people will enjoy a day on the firing line if they give it a try.

"A lot of people are against guns because of a lack of information, lack of training," Assenza said. "When people come out and see what this is all about, my experience is that knowledge at least takes away the extreme end of the negative perception pattern."

As for Costanza, she was thrilled she could try out so many different guns.

"You don't see a variety like this too often," she said. "It's better than a wine tasting."


http://www.gungames.com/

[Longshot]

I think this is a great group. More power to them. It's got to be a headache for the left to have this organization exist. For those who disagree, remember, our enemies enemies can be our allies.

On a lighter note...I wonder if they get offended when they are asked to stop "limp wristing"?

Sorry, I couldn't resist

[Dave R]

Great media coverage.

"If they're simply about affinity--we're interested in our own self-defense and target practice and so on--that's fine, but I hope they're not going to try to convince the community that carrying a gun makes you safe, because it doesn't." (openly gay state Sen. Sheila Kuehl D-Santa Monica)

Senator Kuel, carrying doesn't make you "safe", only "safER".

[David Scott]

As for Costanza, she was thrilled she could try out so many different guns.

"You don't see a variety like this too often," she said. "It's better than a wine tasting."

I know THAT feeling!

Seriously, any and all support for RKBA is welcome, and as Longshot says, this group makes liars of those who paint RKBA supporters as just a bunch of rednecks.

[Gorthaur]

Hey, now, wait a minute! I know lots of gay rednecks.

[croyance]

Gorthaur, a gay redneck is a scarier image than I want to contemplate.

Its great to see another part of America in this cause. We need people to see that it is truely a cross-section of America stands behind this issue, even gay rednecks.

Truely liberal people would be in favor of gun rights, unlike the "liberal" who have hijacked the word.

[justinr1]

>>Truely liberal people would be in favor of gun rights, unlike
>>the "liberal" who have hijacked the word.

Absolutely correct. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that about 25% of democrats have no problems with handguns. I used to be a dem until I woke up and could not stand their policies anymore. Thank God it wasn't too late.

justinr1

[Spectre]

Good for them! Smash those stereotypes...

Equal opportunity gun ownership!

[MikeK]

We need more non-stereotypical groups to support our gun rights. Based on past results the gays have been far more effective at promoting their rights than the typical (whatever that is) gun-owner has been.

More power to them!

[TwoGuns]

Ah yes, the article is out! I actually was at this shoot with the writer, my dad, and a friend. It was a pretty good time. Got to check out someone's Ruger PC-9 with a red-dot, and shot some IDPA-style matches.
It's good to see more people defending our rights.

[blades67]

The Pink Pistols must love Glocks because black goes with everything.

The temptation was too great!

More power to them.

[Redlg155]

Ya know..Glock could come out with a limited run of pink pistols.

Even though I don't support their choice of lifestyles, It's good to see folks arming themselves. That just means more gunowners out there and a larger voice.

I can hear their rally cry...." Come out of the Closet, and while you are at it, Bring your Guns!"

Good Shooting
RED

[David Scott]

"Come out of the gun cabinet", maybe?

Just for the record, EAA offers the Witness Polymer Frame in pink, and at the gun show last weekend I saw a display of guns with anodized metal frames in different colors, including hot pink. There would make great prizes at a Pink Pistols shooting event.

With Pink Pistols and Second Amendment Sisters, we have a couple of groups that defy the "Darryl and Darryl" gun-owner image that antis like to paint. What other groups do we need to recruit? What catchy names could they have?

Wheelguns in Wheelchairs?

Los Pistoleros Latinos?

Grandparents With Guns? (bumper sticker: "Ask me about my MAK-90"

Locked, Loaded and Black?

Big Guns For Little People? (midgets & dwarfs, not children)

NOTE: The only group I would not share a range with is the Full Auto Society For The Blind.

[whitebear]

Hey, Goarthur and Croyance -

Speaking of gay rednecks, there was a country music club in Oklahoma City back in the '70s that catered to the gay cowboy crowd - you ain't seen nothin' 'til you've seen two real rodeo cowboys swing dancin'...

[Jeff Thomas]

You know, before I became interested in the RKBA and firearms I wouldn't have noticed, but ... I've actually found that most RKBA supporters are more intelligent and often more accepting of true "diversity" than anti-self defense activists I've met.

I'm glad the Pink Pistols are growing, and I note Dave R's comment above. So many ignorant people accept the concept that a firearm doesn't confer any additional safety, even in the hands of a trained individual. And yet, people like Senator Kuehl feel safer by having an LEO show up with a firearm. How do they reconcile that inconsistency? [Frankly, they don't see it ... but it's fun to create a little cognitive dissonance for them by pointing it out ... ]

Regards from AZ

[Kentucky Rifle]

..white friends, black friends, Asian friends, etc...etc...The operative word here is "friends". I'll take all I can get!
Longshot, your little "joke", I think it would give my gay friends (who shoot) a great laugh!
With your permission, I'll try it out. If I can deliver the punch line without cracking up first myself, it should come off well.

Kentucky Rifle

[Drizzt]

Pink Pistols

Group targets safety, defense

By Karen M. Goulart


Gwen Patton remembers feeling helpless.
At a vigil for Christian Paige, a transsexual woman murdered in Chicago, she recalls standing by, feeling very small, as she often did at such events.
“I had always despaired at the vulnerability of the gay community, and felt unsafe and helpless, and not quite sure what I could do,” Patton said.
All of this changed for the Jeffersonville resident two months ago when she realized there was a way she could minimize her fears, and protect herself and help others feel the same way.
All at once, under the advisement of longtime friend, Doug Krick, Patton decided to purchase a firearm and, along with her partner, Maggie Leber, start a Delaware Valley chapter of the Pink Pistols.
With her pistol and a carry permit, Patton says she doesn’t feel helpless anymore.
“One tends to think that when you take a gun in your hand, you feel 10-feet tall, that you’re going to be invincible,” she said. “It doesn’t make you feel that way, it makes you feel humble, it makes you scared at first, having a thing in your hand that if you use it wrong you could kill someone. It affects the way you think, act and feel, it moderates your behaviors ... because suddenly, you have a greater responsibility.”
The Pink Pistols’ Web site opens on a splash page with the image of a person wearing a shirt bearing the group’s logo - a silhouette of a person aiming a gun inside a pink triangle - clutching a gun and the phrase “Never Again.”
Beyond that page is another slogan, “Pick on Someone Your Own Caliber.”

Beginnings
A year and a half ago there was no such thing as the Pink Pistols, except perhaps in the mind of openly gay writer Jonathan Rauch.
In a March 2000 commentary penned for Salon.com, Rauch suggested that in response to the myriad violent anti-gay attacks suffered each year, members of the gay community should arm themselves with guns.
“Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons,” Rauch wrote. “In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry.”
In Boston, Doug Krick had already been getting together with friends to go to a local shooting range for recreation. They thought their group should have a name, and when Krick came upon the Rauch story, he quickly adopted the moniker and the first Pink Pistols chapter was born.
In addition to shooting, the group decided to get involved in politics, talking to political candidates, sending a questionnaire and documenting everything on a Web site for the world to read.
Soon, Krick was getting requests from people asking if they could be a member, or start a chapter. He realized he had stumbled upon a void in the community that others were eager to fill.
“So I said, ‘What the hell, let’s have some fun,’ “ Krick recalled. “I used to be a candidate, I ran for state rep. and had a fax list, so I sent a fax out announcing [the group] to the world, so Newsweek did a blurb, and then it sort of snowballed well beyond anything I initially thought of. Someone said, ‘I’ll do T-shirts, then someone said, ‘I’ll make pins.’ I’m more astounded than anyone else that it’s taken the route that it has.”

National movement?
A year and a half later, there are 23 chapters nationwide. Membership is open to people of all sexual orientations and identities and, according to Patton, there are many non-gay members.
The tenor of the chapters seems to be toward protection. Others, like the Delaware Valley chapter, show a melding of Krick’s initial recreational aim and Rauch’s call to arms.
“What the Pink Pistols is for, above all else, is for making people safe, and we’re trying to do it in a way that makes people safer in a responsible way,” Patton said. “We don’t want to cause trouble, we don’t want to hurt anybody - we want to do just the opposite. and I think we’ve done that wherever [a chapter] has started up. In other towns we’ve had a very positive effect, and I think we can do so here, too.”
Patton emphasizes that using a gun against a gay-basher, or any attacker is a last resort, a point reinforced to group members who are new to firearms.
“We’re not a bunch of vigilantes, we’re not Charles Bronson in ‘Death Wish,’ “ she explained. “We believe in the law, upholding the law, and defending ourselves if we are attacked is all we want to do.
“This is a medicine for a social ill ... a medicine if properly dispensed has two parts: the medicine itself, and the instructions for proper administration. The gun is the medicine, and the proper way to use it - when and why - are part of the prescription.”
But for some in the community, the idea of carrying a concealed weapon is not viewed as a reliable remedy. Although both Patton and Krick say they have found support from individual community members, community leaders are hesitant to, or will not, support their mission.
“The g/l/b/t community, obviously, encompasses all walks of life; the leadership tends to come from a smaller subsection, and that subsection generally is not welcome to the right to keep and bear arms movement, so in some ways there has been no representation for that segment of the community,” Krick said. “There is some static, and yes, we are getting some welcoming that would not be expected ... but the g/l/b/t community - some don’t like it, another section is rooting us on.”
Pink Pistol members have said they found, however, an unexpected amount of support from non-gay gun users.
“You’d think from the straight gun community we would get a negative response, we’ve actually been very welcomed by them, they’ve treated us very well with only some exceptions, mostly from the far right-wing fundamental Christians,” Patton said. “In general, the gun people tend to treat us very well, as like-minded people. We tend to be standing for the same ideals. We believe in the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms and self-defense.”

Reaction
Clarence Patton, director of community organizing and public advocacy at the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, is familiar with the violence experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people because of their identities. But he believes carrying and keeping a gun only appears to be an easy solution to a difficult social problem, and one that can end up doing more harm than good.
“I am, and we are, very anti-gun; we don’t think guns solve any problems, and may create more problems,” said Patton, who is not related to Gwen Patton. “I think I would never encourage any community I’m part of - the gay community, the African American community, the urban community - to arm itself. I don’t think that’s the answer.”
While he is aware the Pink Pistols, as part of its mission, state that guns come with responsibility, should be used as a last resort, and that members are educated and trained, Clarence Patton remains unconvinced that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people will be safer because they are armed.
“More guns mean more people get shot,” he said. “It’s not rocket science. These people walking around with guns on them - if someone calls them an epithet are they going to shoot that person?
“It’s clear the police don’t even know when to use guns, so what kind of training are these people getting?”
Clarence Patton also voiced concerns about guns getting in the hands of untrained children, and envisioned scenarios where the gun ended up in the hands of the attacker.
“A gun may not be helpful to you in certain situations: If you are on the street and someone attacks you, usually it’s from behind and your having a gun is not necessarily going to assist you,” Patton said. “The gun may ultimately be used against you: If five people are attacking you, at best, you get away with the gun, at worst you could be the victim.”
But Gwen Patton and Krick have heard these concerns before, and address them with anecdotal and statistical information they say shows where law-abiding citizens are most armed, there is the least amount of crime.
Gwen Patton reiterates the need for proper training and suggests that parents show children their gun and how it works, not only to educate, but to take away the curiosity that leads some kids to play with weapons.
“I personally think that every person that is not a criminal and is mentally sane and stable and is responsible enough to own a gun, should, for the protection of their family,” Gwen Patton said. “It’s a matter of personal responsibility.”
Stacey L. Sobel, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, which is a member of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects, said guns won’t get to the root of the problem of anti-gay violence.
“People have the right to carry guns, and should do so responsibly and within legal guidelines, however, carrying guns is not going to stop hate and will not prevent attacks,” Sobel said. “I think there needs to be continued education of the public, that gay people need to be visible in our communities so that others recognize the important part that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people play.”
Gwen Patton isn’t taking any chances.
“I have never had to use my gun on anything except a paper target and, God-willing, I never will have to use it on anything but,” she said. “I do not want to ever have to use it on a human being, but if I have to defend my life, or the life of my loved ones, I will.”


http://www.epgn.com/StoryPages/NewsS...nkPistols.html

[Jay Baker]

The Pink Pistols in Los Angeles couldn't have been training in a better place. I was a member of the 1800 Americana Adventure Club, for many years, until I moved to Idaho. I helped build those ranges, in San Fransisquito Canyon. Handgun, rifle, shotgun (skeet/trap), SASS, IPSC, Silhouette. You name it, we shot it.

More power to them: everyone should be responsible for his/her personal safety.

J.B.

[OF]

I wonder how long roving gay-bashing cowards would keep stalking the streets if a couple of them ended up in a pine box one night. Gun grabbers clamoring for gay hate-crime protections are going to have a hard time explaining why a media-darling "oppressed group" can't pack heat to save their own skins. I can hear them now: "Oh, we want to protect you from the gay-bashers with another fantastically effective hate-crime law, but you can't be allowed to protect yourself...and certainly not with a G-U-N. I mean, you're....you're....GAY, after all. You need our help!"

- Gabe

[Jeff Thomas]

I always find these TFL threads about the gay community amusing. It must irritate the radical left wing no end to see a lack of gay-bashing on a firearms forum ...

Mr. Patton, quoted above, is obviously a pacifist. But, he is what I call an "aggressive pacifist" ... a most dangerous variety. While he cannot conceive of the need or his ability to defend himself and innocent others, he would also seek to remove your means of self defense. And, I'm sure he would propose doing that ... by force. He, and so many other aggressive pacifists like himself, would request that armed LEO's attack you and me to remove our means of self defense ... simply because Mr. Patton doesn't think we need firearms, and our mere possession of firearms doesn't fit with Mr. Patton's concept of a perfect society.

I would maintain that people like Mr. Patton are actually quite dangerous to our society, and much more so than the average American gun owner. In an earlier, more logical time, Mr. Patton would simply practice his pacifism in peace. Now, he will work to use force against those who disagree with his philosophy. Ironic.

Regards from AZ