There are several camps of thought when it comes to advocacy and work as a Second Amendment activist. There’s one school of thought that strongly holds that any media outlets that may have a bias against the Second Amendment, can go pound sand – need not apply. One of the other newly prevailing, and I’ll say important views, is that we might as well engage with those who may smear us or be contrary to our beliefs. The idea is, they’re going to do what they do regardless, we might as well have our voices heard. Besides, what’s wrong with an actual conversation? Discourse is what we want, or did we drift too far away from that? A recent Politico piece on “women’s safety” and firearms featured a longtime friend of mine and Second Amendment advocate, Theresa Inacker.
Inacker is more than just an advocate/activist, she’s a complete dynamo. Beside having a full time career, Inacker is an attorney who has been admitted to the Supreme Court of the United States Bar, she is the New Jersey state director of the DC Project, and as a writer has covered Second Amendment related issues with her work appearing at The Truth About Guns and SCOTUS Blog.
The Politico piece “Women’s safety and the debate over guns,” by Sophie Gardner, seems like a good faith effort to cover the topic. Unfortunately, the issues were really only slightly glossed over, and imagine that the Second Amendment is more complex than just one piece – almost as if entire publications could be dedicated to the subject.
Pro-gun groups and pro-gun regulation groups have one thing in common: They both say one of their top priorities is protecting women.
The problem? They’ve got opposite solutions.
Gun regulation proponents say they’re worried about domestic violence — specifically an upcoming Supreme Court case that could result in more guns in the hands of domestic abusers. Gun rights advocates say that women would be safer if they carried their own firearms — and want less red tape to make that happen.
The complexities of United States v. Zackey Rahimi, the case cited, is about more than “more guns in the hands of domestic abusers.” The “domestic abuse” portion of Rahimi is not where the focus is, even though that’s where the anti-civil liberty proponents would like to make it. Critics of the Rahimi case often leave out a crucial detail, that this was alleged domestic abuse, and the part of the process that’s being questioned has to do more with allegations and a civil court, rather than convictions in a criminal one.
Rahimi is the perfect boogeyman for anti-civil liberty proponents to rally behind. It’s all too easy to twist the facts.
To be “balanced,” a pro-Second Amendment argument was served up.
“As a five-foot tall, 100-pound woman, I choose to protect myself legally – because I am my best security,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in a 2021 ad where she vowed to bring her Glock to Congress.
That’s a sentiment which stretches all the way back to WWI, when women made the case that with their husbands away and with atrocities against women happening in France and Belgium, they needed to own guns to defend themselves and their families. Eventually, it was considered a patriotic war effort for women to own a firearm.
It’s difficult to argue with the reasoning. Of course it only makes sense to allow the women – and all people – in our civilization to be armed if they so wish to be. And, Inacker mirrors those sentiments.
“I do carry it when I’m permitted to do so, and I know that I’m prepared to protect myself and my daughter in the event that somebody tries to kill us,” Theresa Inacker, the New Jersey state director of the D.C. Project, an organization made up of pro-gun women, tells Women Rule. “I really do see it as a women’s issue that way.”
Inacker believes that stricter gun legislation won’t equate to less gun violence, because “criminals” are “just flouting the law” anyway.
Inacker’s point is one that she makes quite often. On more than one occasion, the advocate has pointed out some police blotters in the years prior to NYSRPA v. Bruen, wanting to know why the alleged criminal in the report is allowed to carry a firearm while the rest of us remain defenseless. The criminals are flouting the law. The arguments of disarmament do go to the wind when up against the fact that it’s not the law-abiding gun owner wreaking havoc in our communities.
As far as Gardner was concerned, that was it for the pro liberty side. A crummy commercial and one – one, non-paid – advocate for the Second Amendment. What was not in the spirit of remaining unbiased was quoting paid, or formerly paid, persons who are/were directly affiliated with highly funded anti-civil liberty groups. Inacker’s voice gets slightly drowned out three to one, with Politico favoring a former executive director of Giffords, the president of Brady, and the executive director of Moms Demand Action. Sounds real fair to me!
If Politico was so concerned about women’s safety and being balanced, they would have reached out to equal parts pro versus anti-civil liberty. They also would not have spoken with professional paid lobbyists, but laypeople/grassroots activists. Quoting Lauren Bobart’s commercial is just lazy, and does not count here. That leaves the lone freedom embracing voice being akin to a Dr. Seuss excerpt, noting that, “A person is a person, no matter how small,” except when up against paid lobbyists and outnumbered three to one. And I think that’s the idea here, to stop freedom lovers into the ground.
One other salient statement Gardner allowed of Inacker’s to make it into the piece concerned rebutting the talking points from the paid lobbyists. All of the quotes provided by the pinko cadre revolved around canned, often repeated mistruths, which have no proven statistical basis. Inakcer was allowed to speak to that:
The D.C. Project’s Inacker chocks that up to a “fear of the unknown.”
“I think there’s a lot of fear-mongering that goes on,” she says. “It’s about educating [women] so that you can be your own first responder.”
Wasting capitol on the opposition is not something I advocate for, however Kris Brown from Brady made such a misleading and jackassey comment, that I’m convinced this going to the supermarket narrative is fortified in the anti-gun movement, because I’ve heard it from so many – as if an event in Buffalo has not helped prove why being armed in a supermarket might be a good idea.
“Whether you are Republican or Democrat, you don’t think that you want to live in a society where to make yourself feel safe, you have to carry an assault style weapon to your Whole Foods or your grocery store,” Brown says.
Through this entire debate, the readers of Bearing Arms have a more grounded perception of reality. Unfortunately the general public might not, and having Brown just outright lie about “assault style weapon[s]” in the quote just further proves these groups can’t be honest about anything. These astroturf groups are the loudest, most repeated, and the public hears what I consider lies and falsifications, time and time again. When objections are sustained, the jury still hears the sentiment.
The work that advocates and grassroots activists like Theresa Inacker are doing across the nation is so crucially important. I’m glad that she was given an opportunity to have a voice for herself, her gender, and for gun owners at large. If we don’t engage at all with publications that might not see things our way, we won’t be outnumbered three to one in the coverage, we’ll be unrepresented. Do people take giant chances when doing this? Yes they do. But we’ve won in the courts. We know what’s constitutional and what’s not. Now we have to gain social traction with the remaining adversaries to freedom and liberty. We need it to be known that we have and will exercise these rights whether or not they agree, and that this right shall be respected.