This is Bonnie Schaefer, she is the owner of Westglow Spa and Resort and former CEO of Claire’s Stores, Inc.  She is a member of the DNC Platform Drafting Committee.  This means that she is responsible for helping to write the official list of positions that the DNC will be taking.

In this video she is saying, quite outright, that she doesn’t believe that anybody should own a gun.

She can walk her statement back by saying it’s just her personal opinion, but does anybody really believe that she would not try to codify her opinion into the DNC platform?

This is a very high ranking member of the largest political party in the country, says that her personal opinion on a matter is 100% diametrically opposed to civil rights protected by the foundational document of this nation and affirmed by the Supreme Court in several recent decisions.

That is both horrifying and telling.

I have been around guns as long as I can remember.  My dad took me shooting the first time when I was about six or seven, and I was hooked.  I went shooting often.  When I turned 18 I bought my first gun.  I’ve had CCW permits since I was 21, and carry as often as I can.  Many of my friends own guns.  The college I went to had a gun club that I was an active participant in.

I do not know anybody who has been shot or killed in an act of gun violence.  I have never shot or killed anybody else.

To read what the acolytes of Bloomberg publish at The Trace or post on Facebook, that should not be possible.

The Facebook post links to this article: One City, Two Americas: Portraits From NRA Weekend in Louisville.  The tagline for the article is “Striking images show how gun culture is celebrated, and mourned.”

If the Bloombergians didn’t have dishonesty, they wouldn’t have anything at all.

The article pictures NRA members and gun rights activists next to gun safety control activists.  The article juxtaposes the NRAAM against gun violence in Louisville.

“On Sunday, the city woke to news of Donald Trump’s call to arm school teachers, and of a double homicide on the West End, where much of the city’s gun violence is concentrated. Neither headline came as a surprise.

In 2015, Louisville recorded its deadliest year in over three decades. From January through April, more than 150 people have been shot inside city limits, a 40 percent increase over the same period last year.”

The profiles of the gun safety control activists included details of the shooting that spurred their activism.

Let’s be honest, shall we.  As much as the antis like to paint this as two sides to the same gun culture coin, it’s not.  On the left is American gun culture.  On the right is the product of thug culture.  I’m not suggesting that Antonio Tharpe or his uncle were thugs, but the gang who shot him over a dice game were.  Tragically, one does not need to be a thug to be the victim of thug culture.  One just has to be an innocent bystander when the shooting happens.

We know who is responsible for the increase in shootings in Louisville, across the city from where the NRAAM happened.  An increase in the number of gangs, fueled by drug dealing and poverty, is the cause of the problem.  This is the same issue that is causing crime spikes in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities.

Let’s be clear, there is nothing in common between the law abiding, freedom loving, culture of gun ownership that the NRA and like minded individuals celebrate, and the drug dealing, murdering, culture of gang violence that is killing kids in the street.  To say the two are related if not the same is a bold face lie.  Defending the civil liberties of law abiding citizens is not equivalent to an obsession with drugs and violence.  If they were the same, having more than 78,000 NRA members, many of the carrying concealed, in teh same place at the same time, would have been a blood bath.  But it was not.  As far as I have been able to determine, no NRA member, 1911 aficionado has ever shot a Glock fanboy over his choice in pistol.  Thug culture, on the other hand, encourages a group of one gang affiliation to  shoot someone over the color of their shoes.

One of these things is not like the other.

Going through the Everytown Facebook comments on this, of course the SJ left HAD to figure out a way to make race part of this issue and try to make the NRA look racist in doing so.

So allow me to make things a little clearer for them.

This is gun culture.  Mr. Colion Noir, an attorney, posing with his lawful AR-15 at a range, maintaining safe gun handling procedure.

This is thug culture.  An anonymous gang member, posing with his illegally shortened shotgun, pointing it at the cameraman.

See the difference?

Of course not.  Why let facts get in the way of ideology.

Unbeknownst to me, at the same time that I was punting the hornets nest on the issue of Gun Culture 2.0 and women, SayUncle was covering a post by PJ Media  on items for women at NRAAM.

The theme was: gun + pink = lady gun.

I have heard the complaint ad nauseam that pink guns don’t appeal to women.

So let me set the record straight on my beliefs on this issue.

I am an ardent free market capitalist.  I believe if there is a niche out there that is not being filled or being filled poorly, fill it yourself.

There are guns that I want, and would LOVE to have that nobody makes.  Why don’t other companies make them?  I don’t know.

God, luck, and financed willing, one day I’ll be rolling my own when it comes to guns.  I’ll design what I think will sell.

If I’m right… BANK!!!

If I’m not… bust (or change in business model).

All I can do is encourage more women who like shooting to start their own ranges and their own training schools and even their own gun or accessory companies.

I don’t want to design guns for women, for the same reason I don’t want to design pants for women.  I don’t know what they want.

But, if one day, I’m cranking out my own products, I’ll be happy to hire some women shooters to design what they think will attract more women into shooting, and we’ll let the market see if they’re right.

There is plenty of room in the tent for everybody.

A commenter on my last post, David Yamane, seemed unhappy about the content I chose to write about, and had some suggestions for me:

“Why don’t you post about how sick you are hearing about how gun culture hates women? I actually heard a talk at The Tactical Conference by Kathy (Cornered Cat) Jackson, in which she draws on research about women in STEM to give gun guys suggestions about how to get women involved in gun culture.https://gunculture2point0.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/the-cornered-cat-kathy-jackson-on-what-women-want/

You should let her know how grateful she should be that male dominated gun culture allowed her the time and space to share her views!

…

I know that you are probably sick of hearing about Kathy Jackson already, but since you seem pressed for things to write about concerning guns, why don’t you read Kathy Jackson’s comments about women in the gun community since she draws on research about women in STEM fields to show that gun guys are NOT embracing women.”

I will take his advice and write about the issue of Gun Culture 2.0 and women.

I don’t know Kathy Jackson, The Cornered Cat, I have never met her, nor have I read her book.  Although, knowing that it is available as an audio-book, I’ll have to give it a try.  So for the purpose of this post, I’m going to have to rely on his assessment of Jackson’s book.  So please forgive any error as hearsay.

I can accept Jackson’s differentiating between being a guest in Gun Culture 2.0 and belonging in Gun Culture 2.0.  Now Social Justice has taught me that I should never question a person’s lived experience, and truth be told, I don’t know what she has experienced, but allow me to bring up a few things from my lived experience.

First, a quasi gripe about Gun Culture 2.0.  I fully consider myself to be Gun Culture 2.0.  I don’t hunt, and have no interest in it.  I like black rifles with 30 round mags.  My gun ownership is the product of an interest in self defense and political support of the 2A.  Much of Gun Culture 2.0 has been influence by military culture.  This is in part do the number of veterans of the War on Terror who have continued to shoot recreationally after their service is up.  There is also the feedback from the video game industry, where shooters want the real life version of their favorite gun from their favorite Call of Duty game.  The most popular firearms sold today are semi-automatic facsimiles of military arms.  Tacticool is a word that has entered the lexicon to describe a civilian rifle that has be accessorized to look like something carried in Black Hawk Down.  The word “operator” gets tossed around a lot.  One cannot go to a gun range, gun show, gun store, or anywhere else in the gun world without it being a 5.11 tactical pants and Blackhawk rigger belt convention.  A substantial portion of Gun Culture 2.0 has an aesthetic that could best be described as Blackwater chic.

Quite a number of new small gun companies have sprung up advertising their founding by ex-military.  The stamp of ex-military has become so important to Gun Culture 2.0 that some people are willing to lie to benefit from it.

No disrespect to our veterans, but this frustrates me.  I never served in combat.  I never cleared a house with my M4 pattern rifle.  I have no operational experience.  I am an engineers and a good one at that.  I know heat treating, GD&T, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, finishing, manufacturing, and everything else it takes to make a gun work.  I may not know how to stage an ambush but I do know how to take aluminum and steel and turn it into one of the finest firearms money can buy.  That took years of schooling and is not something taught in basic training or AIT.  The problem is, who in Gun Culture 2.0 wants to buy an AR or a 1911 from some fat engineer who sits behind a desk with gigabytes of test data to show how good his gun is?  Gun Culture 2.0 wants to buy an AR or 1911 from some ex Navy Ranger F16 door gunner who designed his weapon EXPLICITLY for killing Taliban.  It makes me understand (but not condone) faking military service to get your fledgling gun company off the ground.

All of this goes double when it comes to firearms training.  There are a lot more firearms trainers today than there were in the past.  That is a good thing, it means more training available for all.  But many of these trainers hype their ex-military status as a bona fide.  I am not a woman, and cannot claim to know how a woman may feel but I may have experienced similar feelings of not belonging when I am the guy who shows up at the training course in shorts, carrying a .38 snubbie and not in 5.11, drawing a Glock from the latest in kydex wonder-concealment.  I go to these courses to improve my ability to defend myself in a home invasion or if I am caught in the middle of a convenience store robbery.  However, some of them seem to be “let’s pretend you are Delta Force” weekend retreats.

I think one thing that would make Gun Culture 2.0 more welcoming, not just to women, is a demilitarization.  I am a shooter.  I love shooting.  I’ve been a gun nut since the first time my dad took me shooting when I was six.  Just because I never shot a Taliban in the face with it, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use my rifle, or that I am a wannabe or armchair commando, or anything else you want to call me.

Second, guns have traditionally been a guy thing.  I believe that they will always be a guy thing.  No, I am not saying women are not welcome or that I think any less of them.  It’s just a matter of reality.  I doubt there will ever be equal parity of the sexes in gun culture.  I don’t believe that that is inherently wrong.  There are many things that are guy things: cigars, motorcycles, off-roading, car racing, etc.  Yes, of course we should be sensitive to women in our midst.  Overt sexism is ugly, I don’t like it when I see it.  But we are never going to completely purge the “guyness” from gun culture, and don’t ask us to.

Again,  I am not a woman, and cannot claim to know how a woman may feel but I may have experienced similar feelings of not belonging when I go into a yarn/bead/scrap book/fabric/craft store with my wife.  When I drop her off for a “stitch and bitch” night at the local knitting store, the other ladies welcome me, but I can tell they are all wondering if I’m going to sit and stay and pull out my own pair of needles.  They are happy to try to teach me to knit (there have been offers), but I know I will take a long time to really become one of them.  I am not offended.  I accept that I have wandered into a sphere of women’s culture and that’s OK.

I want more women to come into shooting.  I want more people in general to come into shooting.  We in the community are extending ourselves to women the best way we know how.  I have seen plenty of lady’s nights at the local indoor range or ladies only CCW classes.  I have also seen ladies only motorcycle training courses among other things.  I have never seen a “daddy and me” day at the local park or a guy’s night at the local craft store where I can have a beer and do a needlepoint of my favorite line from Conan the Barbarian.  One act of making someone feel like an outsider doesn’t justify another, and I’m not suggesting that it should.  I just want to give some perspective.

Third, of course I have seen gun shop employees who have been condescending to women when they (women) go into to guy a new CCE piece.  But nearly every time, those same jerks have been condescending to me and other guys when we want to look at something other than the latest in Teutonic plastic fantastic that “starts with 4 and ends with 5.”  I have griped about that before.  My first rule about gun stores is: If I say “I want to look at X” and the person behind the counter says “Why?  Let me show you a Glock/H&K/SIG.”  Just leave.

There is an aphorism known as Hanlon’s Razor, which states “never attribute to malice what can adequately be blamed on stupidity.”  There needs to be a corollary that states “never attribute to racism/sexism/discrimination what  can adequately be explained with by somebody being an asshole.”  This is something also seen in STEM, don’t take it personally.

Even if there are real individual causes of discrimination, don’t let that stop you.  I can’t stand the asshole at the gun show with the Nazi paraphernalia selling copies of the Turner Diaries.  I have been asked on more than one occasion at a gun show by a dealer “what can I Jew you out of?”  I don’t give those bastards my money.  I ignore them.  I didn’t let those people drive me out of shooting.  For women, if a guy at a gun range really is a sexist pig, find a different range or a different instructor.  Show your disapproval with your dollars.  For every one of them, there are dozens of us who are happy to count you as part of the group.

Fourth, Dana Loesch, who was the Beyonce of NRAAM 2015.

Fifth, Emily Miller, the smartest person on gun laws in America who is not a member of SCOTUS.

Sixth, Kirsten Joy Weiss, who can shoot better than you can.

Seventh, Lena Miculek, who can shoot WAY better than that.

Eight, Julie Golob, rock out with your Smith out.

Ninth, Jessie Duff.

Not just are these women shooters.  They are also celebrities in the culture.  They give talks and demonstrations and have hundreds of thousands of people read their blogs and watch their YouTube videos.

Tenth, the firearms industry itself actively reaching out to women.

Call me skeptical, but I really don’t see how gun culture hates women.  Every indication is the opposite.

Not to overly criticize Ms. Jackson, since I didn’t read her book, but the synopsis seems to indicate her complaints fall very close to the idea of Social Justice microagressions.

“Sure the industry is bending over backwards to develop new products for women.  Sure the industry is bringing very smart and experienced women on board as senior management.  Sure, shooting ranges and firearms instructors are hosting women’s only events to make women feel more comfortable.  But Dillon Precision’s calendar still features beautiful women with guns; and Billy Bob, the owner of Billy Bob’s Guns, Live Bait, and Overalls Emporium called me ‘sweetheart’ so gun culture hates me.”

I think no.

I’ll agree that we have a little bit more to go towards incisiveness, but give us credit were credit is due.

UPDATE

I read Miguel’s comment and it got me thinking.  There is something I didn’t take into consideration that may address our difference in opinion: age.

I don’t know how old Ms. Jackson or Dr. Yamane are, but I can postulate.  Ms. Jackson claims on her website that she’s been a shooter for 15 years and married for 25.  Well, this year is my 15 year high school reunion.  Ms. Jackson got married when I was middle school.  Assuming she got married after college, that would put her in her lat 40’s at a minimum.  Dr. Yamane got his B.S. in 1991, putting him in at about the same age.

I can appreciate how their views on this issue may be different.

I look around me at work, and it shocks me that I am one of the oldest people in my group, not in management, at the ripe old age of 32.  The people I work with, the people I shoot with, the people I hobnob with are in their late 20’s early 30’s.  We are as much raised in Gun Culture 2.0 as we were raised in Web 2.0 or with cellphones.  Women in shooting is nothing new to us, they have always been there.  Our sisters were taught to shoot along side us.   There have always been camo clothes for women and girls available at the local sporting goods store to us.

When some old gray beard Gun Culture 1.0 says something dismissive of women, the response of us is “yeah, sure, whatever gramps” and then our wives and girlfriends out shoot him on the range.

This is the same issue I have with criticism of STEM by the way.

“Blah, blah, blah, women aren’t in enough faculty positions of management, STEM is sexist blah, blah, blah.”

Whatever you say bucko.  Being management or faculty is what happens late in your career, not the beginning.  Those women entered the workforce when the math I was learning was One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and VCR’s still roamed the earth.  The girls I know and went to school with are just as competent as the boys in engineering.  They were recruited into the same programs.  They grew up in a climate were there were outreach programs dedicated to bringing women and girls into STEM.  When you look at how THESE girls are doing in their careers, they are on par with the boys in most fields and doing better in others.

There is a generation of difference between our experiences, literally.  The trials and tribulations of the first wave of women in mainstream shooting won.  So when I hear “Gun Culture 2.0 hates women” it just rankles me.

I am getting a little sick of hearing how STEM hates women.  I have heard all the tradition responses to that statement.  Perhaps women have different abilities and interests that make them less likely to go into STEM.  Maybe women choose different career paths for personal reasons.

But I’m not posting to rehash those arguments over again.  Instead, I am going to prove that STEM, and engineering in particular, has done more for women’s liberation than all the hairy leg, bra burning, feminist protesters in history.

First, what needs to be understood is what life was like in the 19th and early parts of the 20th century.

Housework consumed an enormous amount of time.  Heat was provided by wood or coal burning fireplaces and stoves.  Those required constant maintenance.  They had to me cleaned and the ashed shoveled out.  Cleaning was done by hand.  Not just sweeping the floors, but rugs had to be hauled outside and beaten.  Laundry was washed by hand and hung to dry in a grueling, day long chore.

Common foods like bread were regularly made at home rather than bought.  The lack of cold storage meant that meat either had to be purchased fresh or, in rural locations, was killed fresh.  Butchering the family hog was another day long event as much of the meat had to be cured or preserved to make it last as long as possible.  Cooking was done on a wood burning stove or in a wood burning oven which required near constant tending, as temperature control was limited and could start fires.

Clothes for children were not commonly purchased and were often made by hand stitching, which again, would take a whole work day worth of time.  In rural areas or in poorer households, even adult clothing was made by hand.  In (one of my favorite books) Where the Red Fern Grows, which takes place in the Ozarks of Oklahoma in the early 20th century, a pair of store bought dungarees were a luxury good.

The lives of wives in rural and middle America was backbreaking working, described as  drudgery and toil.

All of this was just regular housework, and doesn’t include other chores, repairs, and tasks that might crop up day to day.

In poor areas, housework was still done by hand by women after WWII.  The BBC show Call the Midwife shows – quite accurately – what women’s work was like in the working class docklands of London in the 1950’s.

So what changed?  What liberated millions of women from slaving in front of stoves and washing tubs?

STEM!

The electrification of America round about WWII and part of the New Deal paved way for every home to have electric appliances.  Electric stoves brought about the age of “set it and forget it” cooking, freeing up time.  Laundry now takes an hour or two per load, and only about 5 minutes of actual work (loading and unloading machines) because of washing machines and dryers.  Dishwashers and vacuums freed up much time needed for cleaning.  Refrigerators allowed longer food storage before spoiling, making the need t0 purchase of groceries a less frequent event, and allowed for the preservation of leftovers.  The microwave allowed for meals to be made ready to eat in minutes.

And that is only on the domestic front.

Industrial changes in manufacturing meant that clothing for all ages could be bought cheaply, and it was easier to throw out worn items than patch and repair them.  The grocery store made the purchase of household items a one-stop trip, rather than having to go to the butcher, baker, green grocer, dry goods, etc.  Mass manufacturing has reduces the cost of domestic goods to the point where they are available to even the poorest homes.

The result is that the average woman only has 11.5 hours of housework per week, which isn’t particularity strenuous, down from the dawn-to-dusk backbreaking labor their grandmothers and great grandmothers did a century ago.

Notice that the rate of women’s participation in the workforce shot up as time saving domestic devices became more widely available.  When daily housework requirement go from 12 hours a day to 2 (or less) what did women do all day?  They went and got jobs.

Mechanical engineering, electrical engineers, industrial and manufacturing engineers, machinists, linemen, welders, miners, and all the other people in power production and distribution, manufacturing and assembly, and all forms of heavy industry, created the goods that freed women from the home.  The wall outlet, washing machine, and microwave did more to liberate women than all the campus marches of the 60’s and 70’s combined.

The next time a feminist gripes about how women are oppressed by engineering, politely reminder her that the reason she has time to complain about female oppression on Tumblr, is that she is not having to spend all day washing the panties she currently has in a knot, by hand in a wash tub with water boiled on an open fire, because some team of engineers at Whirlpool and GE designed her a washing machine and water heater to do that for her.

The NYPD is developing new “sensitivity rules” for police officers to deal with mentally unstable individuals.

NYPD cops are about to become street shrinks, under new rules that require them to use calming phrases when they have to subdue dangerous disturbed people, The Post has learned.

The NY Post describes the new initiative as “touchy-feely.”

Then I went and read the comments at the Weasel Zippers post where I caught the NY Post article.  The comments are terrible.  I can’t stand when polarizing politics gets in the way of a good idea.

Now I will say, I don’t know just yet how effective the NYPD mandade will be.  How they implement these new mandates is something we will have to see.  But at face value, I completely support the push to make officers more sensitive to people’s mental states.  To dismiss that is beyond stupid.

When my dad was dying, he was delusional.  He had no idea where he was.  His blood sugar was out of whack.  His kidneys were failing.  He talked to people who weren’t there and about things that didn’t make sense.

When my wife’s grandfather was at the end of his days, we visited him in the old folks home.  He flirted with my wife, because he had no idea who she was, what year it was, and seemed to think he was at a church dance.

Disease and illness does strange things to people’s awareness and cognitive abilities.  The police are often called out to deal with people who are acting strange.  Sometimes those interactions go badly.

A few years ago a Park Forest, Illinois, police officer killed a 95 year old man with a bean bag round.  The man had dementia and was delusional and dehydrated.  Yes, the man had a knife, but he was 95 and thirsty.

There have been several accounts of police shooting  or tazing diabetics who are having a diabetic crisis and acting erratically because their blood sugar was way off.

These people didn’t need to get shot.  They just needed a cup of juice.

There was a have been similar incidents of police shooting and tazing elderly people with dementia.

There has been an increase in police having to interact with the mentally ill.  Police, psychiatrists, and medical doctors all have proposed ways that police can improve their response to people with mental illness.

The motto of the police is to “protect and serve.”  Saving the lives of the mentally ill, rather than shooting them should be a priority.  I’m not asking the police to treat the mentally ill.  But for a police officer to be able to assess if a person is suffering from a mental or emotional problem and de-escalating the situation in a way that does not involve harming a person that is not fully cognitive is a critical.  Even if the tactic is to contain the person until medical personnel can better handle the situation is a step forward.

This is not an unreasonable position to take, given that as the baby boomers get older, the number of people with diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other problems will increase.  If this saves one grandparent who is having a medical crisis from being shot unnecessarily, it’s a good thing.

But a good portion comments to this article seem to cheer on the idea that the police should just shoot and or taze people who are having problems and that this is a case of liberalism run amok.

This why we can’t have nice things.  Because if a good idea does manage to come out from the other side of the aisle, it’s immediately quashed.  Liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican – I don’t care who comes up with the idea, if it saves lives and reduces the financial burden on cites by reducing the number of wrongful death suits, I will entertain the idea.

Maybe, just maybe, a policy of teaching a cop how to identify and deal with someone who needs an MD more than a JHP is more important than the letter after the name of the person who  created the policy.

Mother Nature is a mean bitch.  In the wilderness, if you are not screwing, killing, or eating something; something is screwing, killing, or eating you.  There is no middle ground.  I don’t care how many Disney movies you watched.  When it comes to wild animals, if you forget that you are part of the food chain for even a second, you will be reminded of that fact by being mauled to death and turned into shit.

Commune with the bears in Alaska, end up as bear poop in the woods.

Forget that your pet Chimp is a wild animal and not just a TV prop, and it will turn your neighbors face and hands into monkey shit.

Take you kids for a nice day at the zoo and watch as a male chimp kills and eats a baby chimp in the chimp enclosure, because he was bored.

Sure, Harambe looked like he was protecting that boy.  That would have been until he decided that he was tired of his little human play thing and turned the boy’s skull into paste to remind the rest of the human population that he’s still an aggressive wild animal.

Just watch this video of a 400 lbs male gorilla at an undisclosed zoo had a mother nature moment.

When it comes to dangerous human/animal interactions, Robert Muldoon was right.

Personally I’m not going to throw too much animus at the mom either.  I just took my two-year-old to Miami and back by airplane twice in the last two weeks.  After that boy had been strapped into an airplane seat against his will for three hours, the second we let him out he became a gas molecule, bouncing all over the place.  You can only have a little kid tied down in a stroller or leashed for so long before he melts down into a screaming pile of “no” and “mine.”  We’d let him walk to stretch his legs during the layover, but if we let go of his hand for a second to check our boarding passes or grab his sippy cup out of the diaper bag and he was off like a shot running.  There were a couple of hard sprints to catch up with the boy, who just two seconds before was standing nicely drinking his juice and then decided he wanted to be four gates down from ours to watch a plane taxi in.  Anybody who thinks a mom can have both eyes and one hand on a little kid every second, especially in a place like a zoo where there are so many things to see, doesn’t have kids.

Shoot the gorilla.  Save the kid.  Let the animal rights activists  who think that this killing was unnecessary take their kids to Uganda where chimps have been known to kill and eat the children of local villages, and the locals have to hunt man eating chimpanzees.

The only question left open for me is: what caliber for gorilla?