Laugh and Plaster, Lipstick and Lead

Interesting article from a Dallas Observer blogger who respected George Romney, but balks at Mitt and Ann pretending to have working class roots.

I’m sure Gaskell Romney did struggle. The Romney family story is one of genuine courage and audacity. The part where I laughed last night, however, was when Mitt Romney tried to paint his dad, George Romney, as a blue-collar Detroit guy.

And an interesting Dallas Observer article on talented women shooters that were held back by their husbands. Now they train women who have been assaulted and raped, and those who want to avoid being assaulted, raped … or just held back. But there are losses to be faced:

… In 2007, Jeanie and Shellee founded Lipstick and Lead, an organization whose mission is to teach women to shoot and protect themselves. The slogan: Educate, empower, reload.

… business is booming. Concealed handgun permits are on the rise among Texas women, growing nearly four-fold from 2001 to 2011. Local gun retailers say women across all demographics are buying more guns, both for sport and for protection, if not from the scary world depicted on the local news, then the even scarier one depicted by cable TV’s punditry.

… the misuse of guns would both dominate the news cycle and rock her family — first with the mass shootings in Colorado, Wisconsin and College Station, then with her own grandson, the oldest of her 23 grandchildren, who committed suicide in early August, shooting himself in his apartment. Devin was 24. Jeanie’s daughter had cared for him since he was 13, officially adopting him at 18, and over the years, he became an excellent gunsmith in the Army Reserves and a patient shooting instructor at Elm Fork, where he worked until last year.

Jeanie’s first reaction to news of shooting rampages is an impossible wish that she could have trained the victims to protect themselves. “Maybe that .38 [pistol] in the purse would have been just the thing to stop a terrible situation,” she says, her voice grave and unwavering.

Processing her grandson’s suicide is obviously more challenging.

I’ve read a lot of shooters opining that somehow in a smoky room they could have brought down a man with night vision goggles, body armor and a large semi-automatic magazine. I have no problem with sober and properly-trained people owning weapons for protection, but in Stopping a Mass Shooter, dagblog’s Doc Cleveland lets some air out of the belief that concealed weapons will magically defeat all foes.

While in the right holster a gun is just a tool, sometimes people use them before exhausting less permanent options than murder and suicide.