column: Women with Guns Fight Back

Good morning:

This week’s FOX/ifeminist column, entitled “Women with Guns Fight Back,”
is available for reprinting and reposting. I thank you for your interest.

The FOX News URL is

The ifeminist URL is

A cut-and-paste is attached below.
Cheers
Wendy McElroy

Women with Guns Fight Back

By Wendy McElroy

Women need to defend themselves, especially single women or those
with husbands overseas. And the media has a responsibility to discuss
honestly the issue of gun ownership. The John Walsh Show on NBC may have dealt a
blow (4/29) to both goals by “ambushing” three women who agreed to discuss
their gun ownership and advocacy on air.

Their story is a fascinating glimpse into the sensationalizing bias
that surrounds the gun issue.

Maria Heil of http://www.2asisters.org Second Amendment Sisters, Tiffany Hyatt Theroit of
http://www.armedfemalesofamerica.com/ Armed Females of America and Lisa Marquez had
reason to trust John Walsh. The Show’s site http://www.johnwalsh.tv/html/meet.html
describes him as “a tireless advocate for victims’ rights and missing
children.” Moreover, Walsh claims to support the Second Amendment.

Why, then, is Maria’s commentary about the show entitled http://www.2asisters.org/liarliar/ “Liar, Liar”? Why does Tiffany http://www.2asisters.org/liarliar/tiffany.html accuse the show’s staff of “invading our lives and using
the fact that Lisa and I were victims to set us up.” Why has Lisa released http://www.2asisters.org/liarliar/lisa.html a public statement to explain she
was “lied to” and declare that she, her friends and her family are “very
disappointed” in Walsh?

Lisa had feared the show would be confrontational, making it too
painful to discuss the domestic violence that prompted her to buy a gun. She
tried to withdraw a few days prior to taping. But, as she explained, a staff
member called “and promised this was a show about empowering women and not
a debate.” Tiffany had a similar experience; “We were told it would not be
a debate, just about our own individual stories.”

Lisa finally agreed to appear for the same reason as Tiffany, who
had armed herself after being raped by an off-duty police officer. They
wanted other women to know their options in self-protection.

Instead, the show turned into a humiliating circus, which seemed
staged to discredit the pro-gun guests.

Maria explained what happened, “We were seated in order of our
segments, Tiffany, Lisa, myself, and then Sylvia.” Sylvia, whom the show http://www.johnwalsh.tv/cgi-bin/topics/today.cgi?id=173 described as “a
former female gang member who says that she is now opposed to people owning
guns for personal defense,” was a surprise to the women.

(Strangely, the May issue of Marie Claire Magazine features an
article on women and guns in which the same Sylvia is quoted, “When I go back to
Compton, CA, I stay strapped [armed with a concealed gun] 24/7.” She also
stated, “I spent three years in prison for attempted murder…” There is a
photo of Sylvia holding a gun, which is illegal for anyone with her criminal
background to possess. As Maria observed, “I wonder how John Walsh, of
America’s Most Wanted fame, feels about showcasing a possible felon.”)

Maria continued, “When Tiffany was telling her story, Sylvia started
to say something a couple of times, but stopped herself…Now it was
Lisa’s turn. Lisa never got to tell her story because Sylvia constantly
interrupted.”

During a commercial break Tiffany complained to a producer about
Sylvia’s hostile interruptions. He reportedly told her to get “more
aggressive”, perhaps hoping for a “Jerry Springer” type brawl to erupt.

During Maria’s segment, “they introduced a woman from the so-called
‘Million’ Mom March…During my answers to the MMM’r, Sylvia felt compelled
to interrupt me over and over. She even said that I was a criminal because
I owned a gun!”

In a CNSNews http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200304\NAT20030430d.html article,
executive producer of the John Walsh Show Alexandra Jewett denied that the
pro-gun women had been set-up. At first, she claimed that the MMM audience
member just happened to be present and happened to belong to the anti-gun
oragnization. However, as CNSNews reported, “two minutes into the
broadcast,” the woman had been “featured on camera, with her name and the caption
‘Works with teens to educate them about gun violence.’” Jewett acknowledged
that MMM’r had been “placed in the audience by the show’s staff.”

The John Walsh Show should realize that women who pick up guns and
learn how to defend themselves are not easily victimized. Maria, Tiffany, and
Lisa are using the abusive incident to educate people about media bias
regarding gun ownership.

Meanwhile, Maria is busy correcting statements Walsh made on the
show. For example, he claimed “nine kids a day die in gun accidents in the
home.” Maria observes that, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, the
9-a-day number includes “children” as old as 24 and more than 50 percent of
those young adults commit suicide. When you additionally factor out
“children” who are killed outside the home while involved in crime, the death
rate falls to the lowest in recorded history. In Maria’s opinion, Walsh
deliberately overstated the number for sensationalism.

This is the state of the gun debate in North America. Maria’s two
daughters — aged 10 and 12 — had to hear their mother called a criminal for
legally owning a gun by a woman who boasts of illegally owning one. A
battered woman and a rape victim were incessantly harangued while Walsh’s staff
reportedly did nothing but suggest an escalation of the conflict.

Tiffany commented, “Whether women carry a firearm is their choice,
but there is nothing wrong with having…an informed decision.” The media
should facilitate this information flow, not halt it.

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For photo (05/02/02)