Women must not depend upon the protection of
man, but must be taught to protect herself.
- Susan B. Anthony, July 1871

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Guns have been taken from trained male Law enforcement officers. Should we disarm them also?
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(Quote)Meanwhile, Thoman, of Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, said battered women tend to shun guns for fear they will be taken from them by their abusers.”I think this push to arm more people is offensive to a lot of women who
actually have been in vulnerable situations,” she said. “It just raises the stakes on the danger and the violence in their lives.”(quote)

It’s not offensive to smart women who have been in abusive situation. Fortunately more and more women who have been in abusive situation are beginning to realize thathad they had a Self defense weapon, they would NOT have been in that abusive situation!

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Star Tribune Article: Is handgun debate another battle of the sexes?

BYLINE: Conrad deFiebre
CREDITLINE: Star Tribune
HEADLINE: Is handgun debate another battle of the sexes?

Two women leading the fight to make permits to carry handguns available to
most Minnesotans say they are trying to make the state safer for everyone.
And finally, after years of struggle and defeat at the hands of
gun-control forces, they are poised for success.
Rep. Lynda Boudreau, R-Faribault, and Sen. Pat Pariseau, R-Farmington, are
the chief sponsors of the initiative. If it passes, it will be due in no
small measure to the persistence of these two women. They each have a
background in nursing, live on a farm, love gardening, are comfortable handling
firearms and see public service — from the Legislature to volunteering for
4-H and the Girl Scouts — as an extension of their Roman Catholic faith.
The debate on handgun rights in Minnesota usually splits along gender
lines: On one side are legions of men wearing yellow lapel stickers reading
“Have Gun, Will Vote.” On the other are the pink-clad women from the Million
Mom March whose stickers say “Sensible gun laws, safe kids.”
Public-opinion polling confirms this gender gap, but there are prominent
exceptions. Some of the most compelling testimony in favor of the
long-debated gun-permit initiative has come from women with harrowing tales of
personal victimization.
And then there are the two sponsors of the bill, which, if passed, is
expected to increase eightfold the number of Minnesotans licensed to pack heat
in the street. Both like the measure’s chances.
“It’s a done deal, if not this year, then next,” said Boudreau, noting
that Gov. Tim Pawlenty and majorities in the both the House and the Senate
now support some form of her legislation.
“If we get it to the floor, it will pass,”said Pariseau, whose bill has
been denied a hearing for six years in the DFL-controlled Senate but is
expected to receive one next week.
Boudreau, 50, “has more strength than any legislator I can think of,” said
House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon. “She takes the tough issues and
carries them with grace.”
In addition to the handgun measure, Boudreau has been chief sponsor of
what she calls the Women’s Right to Know bill, which would require a
24-hour waiting period before an abortion. In her ninth year in the House, she
regularly spells Sviggum in the speaker’s dais, and chairs the Health
and Human Services Committee.
Pariseau, 66, is a native of St. Paul’s East Side who runs an Amway
distributorship and farms 120 acres of asparagus with her husband of 42
years, Ken. “She’s very passionate about what she takes up,” said Senate
Minority Leader Dick Day, R-Owatonna. “But she gets along really well with
people.”
First elected to the Senate in 1988, she also crusaded to repeal state
auto-emissions testing. It eventually happened, but only after chief
sponsorship was given to a majority DFLer, a scenario that might be replayed on the
handgun bill.
Soft sell?
Some critics contend that Boudreau and Pariseau are unwitting pawns in a
gun-industry scheme to soft-sell a pistol for every woman’s purse.
“I think these authors are very sincere in what they’re doing, but
it’s less threatening to the public to suggest that the people carrying
guns are going to be mothers,” said Rebecca Thoman, executive director of the
gun-control group Citizens for a Safer Minnesota. “It plays to a whole
marketing strategy that women need to buy and carry guns to feel safer.”
Proponents of the legislation, however, say that women have derived the
greatest benefit from reduction in violent crime that followed enactment of
more liberal handgun permit policies in other states — whether or not they
carry guns themselves.
Polls show that most Minnesota women prefer a tight rein on guns in
public. By nearly a 3-to-1 ratio in a 2001 University of Minnesota survey, women
said handgun permits should be issued only for special needs. Men were much
more evenly divided.
A 1998 Star Tribune Minnesota Poll found majorities of both men and women
opposed to changing the law, with less support among women.
But at nearly every House hearing on the subject in recent years, women
have been the star witnesses.
Two years ago, Texas state Rep. Suzanna Gratia Hupp described her
helplessness as she watched a lone gunman kill her parents and 21 other unarmed
diners in a cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, in 1991. She had left her own pistol
in her car, because Texas law then prohibited carrying it. Having her gun
with her might not have changed the result, she added, “but it sure as heck
would have changed the odds.”
Last week, Fillmore County jailer Theresa Schieffelbein of Wycoff, Minn.,
testified that she was denied a permit to carry a handgun off duty despite
threats against her from an inmate she had guarded.
“People don’t understand the distinction between the good guys and the
bad guys,” she said. “They think anyone with a gun is bad. But if I
can’t get a gun under these circumstances, who can?”
Fillmore County Sheriff Jim Connolly said Friday that Schieffelbein, who
appeared before the House Judiciary Policy and Finance Committee in uniform,
did not have his permission to do so. He said he had denied her permit
application because she listed no personal safety hazard.
And last month, Andrea Murphy of Apple Valley testified that she had been
denied a permit after being abducted and sexually assaulted on her way home
from work one day. “I don’t think you should allow a bureaucrat to
determine for me whether I am in danger or not,” she said.
Apple Valley Police Chief Scott Johnson later said Murphy’s 1999
application for a permit never mentioned the incident, which had occurred at
least 10 years earlier in another city.
‘Clenching fear’
Boudreau says that although she hasn’t sought a permit herself, she
sympathizes with the “clenching fear” she has seen in people who have been
denied them. She also understands the resistance of police leaders who regard
the movement to arm more ordinary citizens as implicit criticism of their
own effectiveness.
But, as she testified last week, “in the one moment of your life when you
most need protection, the police cannot always be there for you.”
Pariseau, who won’t discuss whether she has a handgun permit, likes to
frame the issue in stark terms of natural law. “Critters have a right to
defend themselves,” she said.
Both women enjoy target shooting on their rural acreage, Boudreau with a
.22-caliber pistol, Pariseau with .22 and 9-millimeter pistols and a .22
rifle. Boudreau hunts, too, but with a bow and arrow.
Boudreau has been a Faribault police reservist and a Rice County family
health aide. She and her husband of 32 years, Jim, a home-improvement
contractor, raised three children and now dote on three grandchildren. She got
into politics in the early 1990s, originally as a DFLer, then switched to the
GOP.
Trained as a registered nurse, Pariseau, a Republican activist for 30
years, formerly served on the Farmington school board and worked in the
Minnesota office of then-U.S. Sen. Rudy Boschwitz. She has six children, 13
grandchildren and a great-grandson.
“I don’t know that I have to carry a gun,” she said. “But I want
everyone who wants one not to be turned away for stupid reasons.”
Neither legislator sees handgun rights as purely a women’s issue.
“I don’t think everyone should have a firearm,” Boudreau said. “But if
they feel it’s their last resort, that should not be denied them.”
Meanwhile, Thoman, of Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, said battered women
tend to shun guns for fear they will be taken from them by their abusers.
“I think this push to arm more people is offensive to a lot of women who
actually have been in vulnerable situations,” she said. “It just raises the
stakes on the danger and the violence in their lives.”
– Conrad deFiebre is at [email protected]