Nice press coverage

It’s rare to get pro-gun press coverage on the politics of gun owner rights.  This article from the Gainesville Sun is so refreshing:

WASHINGTON – Ginny Brown-Waite pulled into a parking lot in Chiefland around midnight to rest her drowsy eyes before continuing her drive to a state legislative session in Tallahassee.

She awoke that night in 2000, she said recently, to four or five young men rocking her car and demanding she open up.

“I said, ‘No, I’ve got a gun in the glove compartment,’ ” recalled Brown-Waite, 62, who was then a state senator and now is a member of Congress. “You’d better leave.”

She was bluffing, but the men fled. And Brown-Waite later got a concealed weapon permit after training on a .357 magnum.

The experience helps explain why Brown-Waite, who owns a .38 and a .45, gets riled when the Second Amendment comes up, as it did last week when Congress passed landmark legislation to shield gun manufacturers from lawsuits. After the vote, she lashed out at the “out-of-touch and dwindling minority of Congress” that opposes gun ownership.

Brown-Waite, one of at least three members of the Florida delegation to carry permits, shows that Florida isn’t just well armed. The state is a significant player in gun-control debates nationwide.

Brown-Waite, a 5-foot-2-inch grandmother, seems the last person to be “packing heat,” as she calls it, but she might be when in Florida.

“I have the permit,” she said, “and at least one weapon, I guarantee you.”

Yeah, the stereotype is she would be “the last person to be packing heat”.  But when you think about it you come up with a different answer.  Who is it that most needs a tool to equalize the odds in a violent confrontation?  It’s not the young, large, adult male.  It’s the weak and the slow. The people most likely to become victims of predators are the ones that should have the training and the tools to defend themselves.  Even though the Gainesville Sun didn’t come up with quite the right conclusion they gave everyone enough information they can break through the stereotype on their own.  And that is breaking through still another stereotype–about the MSM.  Thank you Cory Reiss, Gainesville Sun.

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