the "Million Mom March" will stage a series of rallies across the country demanding new and severe limits on self-defense and the right to bear arms. Together, these marches constitute the largest mass protests against civil rights since millions of Ku Klux Klanners grabbed white hoods and rope and filled the nation's boulevards back in the 1920s.
Don't look for Stephanie Sailor at one of the Moms' anti-liberty rallies -- or rather, do look for her at a counter-protest in support of gun rights.
As a vegetarian who works with at-risk women and creates art-work that reveals the plight of abused children, the young Chicago artist and public-relations pro would seem more likely to fit the stereotype of gun-banner than gun-wielder. But Sailor is an uncompromising advocate of the right to bear arms, and an organizer of Chicago-area efforts for the Armed Informed Mothers' March, which promises to voice the less hysterical side of the ongoing gun debate. (For the sake of full disclosure: Stephanie Sailor is a colleague of mine through my association with the Henry Hazlitt Foundation.)
After a series of break-ins and assaults, including one occasion where she awoke to find intruders in her inner-city apartment, Sailor has come to appreciate the value of self-help and the danger of relying on others. "I've had a series of experiences where I had to call 911 and it just didn't do the trick. It's to the point that I just won't call anymore."
Most recently, a neighbor in the process of moving out of an apartment shared with an abusive boyfriend -- "that's the time when she's most likely to get murdered by her partner," says Sailor, who's a survivor of a violent home herself -- pounded on Sailor's door and begged her to call 911. By the time the police arrived, the boyfriend had barged in, threatened Stephanie for placing the call, then gone on his way, leaving her to contemplate what could have happened while she waited for the boys in blue.
The alternative?
Well, like millions of people around the country, including the women who plan on joining her in the pro-self-defense counter-protest on Mother's Day, Sailor wants to own the means of self-defense. And like those same millions, she's found that the best tool for giving a peaceful person a competitive edge over a violence-prone thug is a handgun.
The "sensible" gun controllers don't agree, of course. They're fond of claiming that self-defense is a bad idea, that people who can drive cars at 70 miles an hour, vote, and raise children are otherwise so irresponsible that they're likely to hurt themselves and their loved ones rather than use a firearm in self-defense.
The gun-controllers' advice to people like Stephanie Sailor, suffering yet another midnight break-in, is the spirit, if not the actual words, of the ancient Chinese advice to rape victims: Just lie back and enjoy it.
Comforting, no?
But the evidence suggests that Stephanie has the right idea in exchanging the emergency speed-dial for a more self-reliant approach.
In his exhaustive 1997 study of concealed carry laws and the use of handguns for self-defense, published as More Guns, Less Crime Prof. John Lott found that making it easier for people to legally pack heat lowered violent crime rates in jurisdictions around the country. Not too surprisingly, women, who are usually especially attractive prey for two-legged predators, make out the best when people are allowed to carry self-defense tools that don't depend on stature or physical strength.
Wrote Lott, "the results are at least suggestive that rapists are particularly susceptible to this form of deterrence. Possibly this arises since providing a woman with a gun has a much bigger effect on her ability to defend herself against a crime than providing a handgun to a man."
And women don't all have to pack heat to enjoy a safer world. Just a few armed women seem to create a remarkably hostile work environment for bad guys. "To phrase this differently, the external benefits to other women from a woman carrying a concealed handgun appear to be large relative to the gain produced by an additional man carrying a concealed handgun."
When you think about it, that makes an awful lot of sense. Take an average woman and sic a street thug on her, and you have another nasty entry in the police blotter. Give that average woman a pistol, and the news story is likely to read a lot differently.
Now, the Million Mom-types insist that they have no intention of actually banning guns. Guns should still be available, they say, but subject to severe restrictions, such as waiting periods, licensing and registration, and trigger-lock requirements.
But historically, registration has always led to confiscation schemes (just ask Australians, Britons, Californians, Canadians, ad nauseum). Registered or not, locked guns are rendered remarkably unsuitable for use against midnight burglars, who can be impatient as you fumble for the key. In fact, the grab-bag of restrictions threatens to disarm those who most need the means of self-defense.
For a 1993 article in the Yale Law & Policy Review, Sayoko Blodgett-Ford reviewed the experiences of women in domestic violence situations. She concluded that police, neighbors and the system overall were of little help. The best defense? Guns, the benefits of which vastly outweigh the potential risks.
But what about those "sensible" restrictions?
Said Blodgett-Ford: "[L]engthy waiting periods to purchase a firearm leave battered women dependent on the police, who cannot possibly provide twenty-four-hour protection. Additionally, a permit/license statute may force battered women to risk alerting their abuser to the fact that they intend to leave the home. If the police are not careful in conducting a background investigation, the abuser could learn the new address of a woman who had separated."
She suggested that "restrictions such as lengthy waiting periods and certain permit/license requirements are unreasonable unless they are modified or applied in a manner that incorporates the needs of battered women." She went further and recommended that, "if a battered woman is charged with violating such a statute, the jury should be instructed to acquit her if she had to violate the statute in order to obtain a firearm for self-defense."
But the logic seems to escape the Million Mom March-types.
Sailor thinks that's because the organizers are largely well-heeled and well-protected suburbanites and urbanites who can't savvy a need for self-defense, are far-removed from the rural hunting culture, and fly into a panic over the crime stories they see on the TV news.
"They're soccer moms, so to speak," says Sailor. "And what they're doing in my eyes is they take these black women from the inner-city who have these gory stories ... And they use these stories to pull the public in emotionally so they go, 'oh, yeah! That woman; her son was murdered. Yes indeed, I'm against guns.' "
"Honestly, these million-mom marchers, I find them a disgrace to my gender. They're reacting out of emotion instead of logic. I'm sure that most of these women have never held a gun in their hands."
But Stephanie Sailor has held guns and knows their value. So, despite the demands of a full-time job and an art installation in-progress (the piece on abused children) she's making the time to gather self-defense advocates to meet the Million Moms and set them straight.
Across the country, other self-defense advocated will do the same, all organized by e-mail and telephone at the grass-roots level. Contrast that with the anti-gun-rights effort, which is masterminded by Donna Dees-Thomases, the sister-in-law of Clinton-crony, Susan Thomases.
So when you tune in to the TV news on Mother's Day and get an eyeful of some rally in favor of "sensible" gun control, keep in mind what you're really seeing. Those "Moms" are marching to strip Stephanie Sailor of her right to defend herself the next time some SOB crashes through her apartment door.
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