Posted on 05/23/2002 10:11:04 AM PDT by tarawa
When it comes to being safe, it is very personal
05/22/02
Tom "Lee" Anderson read the newspaper article again. And again.
It said guns in homes were 43 percent more likely to be used against a family member. "Being a reasonable man," Lee says, "I said, 'I better saw this gun in half.' "
Being an educated man, he researched both sides of the gun debate first. "It turns out that that is absolutely" wrong, Lee says of the statistic, although he used a much more colorful word than "wrong."
This is a 62-year-old father of two daughters and keeper of two cats, one of whom he named after poet Emily Dickinson. He's good in math and history, but studied philosophy -- which he taught at a California community college -- because it "was difficult for me," he says. "I had to think, and I like that."
His walls of bookcases are full of poetry, philosophy and family pictures. Not an NRA booklet in the bunch. Lee hates beer, drives a minivan and doesn't have the stomach to hunt. "I couldn't kill any animals," he says.
This sensitive grandpa is a pro-gun fanatic? Hardly. "I am, above all else, critical," he says.
He's more like a cool glass of water in the suffocating heat of the gun debate. Each side believes it has the smoking gun to prove the other wrong. Lee says both just need to listen more.
"A lot of people on the same side I'm on are just as knee-jerk as the people on the opposite side," says the Southeast Portlander. "Both sides see each other in stereotypical . . . ways."
Lee breaks the mold on both counts. He calls himself a lifelong liberal Democrat, who voted twice for Bill Clinton but helped elect George W. Bush on one issue: his pro-gun stance. Even though Lee identifies with Democratic values, he says, "I never signed up for being stupid and mindless about guns."
Lee bought his first handgun for protection because he lived in a boat on the Sacramento River. Now he considers his pistol a necessary tool. Like a flashlight.
He uses it only when he really needs it. So far, that's been three times. "Each time," Lee says, "the threat was ended the minute I presented the gun."
Lee says he has taken more than 300 hours of NRA combat and firearms training. "They teach us to be really alert to what's going on around you."
He shoots competitively and owns 15 types of guns -- and, he points out, two pairs of shoes. But Lee says he's never fired a gun at anyone.
"It's the last thing in the world I want," Lee says. "No, it's the next to the last thing. The first thing is, I don't want to be shot and killed by some moron."
Two months ago, Lee read perplexing news that demanded his response. In 10 years, about 100 Oregon women have been killed by their ex-partners, according to The Oregonian.
"We owe these women better," Lee says. Within four weeks, he and a group of other gun owners planned a free nine-hour seminar to teach abused women how not to be victims of their circumstances.
Several dozen women showed up. "I am tired of being a victim," one commented. Similar training is planned in Salem next month.
Empowering women with knowledge, Lee says, may be the best way for them to keep their fear in check. Maybe they'll never actually own or fire a gun.
Then again, maybe existing laws designed to protect them will one day work the way they're supposed to. Maybe no one will ever try to rape them or kill them or beat them up or harm their children.
Yeah, maybe. S. Renee Mitchell can be reached by e-mail at rmitch@news.oregonian.com or 503-221-8142.
He uses it only when he really needs it. So far, that's been three times. "Each time," Lee says, "the threat was ended the minute I presented the gun."
And those three times will appear nowhere in the statistics used to analyze "gun violence." These are biased by the requirement for the gun to actually be shot before the incident counts as a successful employment of a firearm in self-defense. Recall this next time you hear VPC or the Brady bunch bleating about guns being "more likely to be used on you than for you." It just ain't so.
Laws are not magic wands. That's why punishments are proscribed for violators. Rules, truly, are made to be broken.
A woman was killed on a nearby beach recently. A can of pepper spray, a beagle, or a gun would have saved her. Everyone needs to be accountable for their own defense.
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