Group targets safety, defense
By Karen M. Goulart
PGN Staff Writer
© 2001 Philadelphia Gay News
Gwen Patton remembers feeling helpless.
At a vigil for Christian Paige, a transsexual woman murdered in Chicago, she recalls standing by, feeling very small, as she often did at such events.
“I had always despaired at the vulnerability of the gay community, and felt unsafe and helpless, and not quite sure what I could do,” Patton said.
All of this changed for the Jeffersonville resident two months ago when she realized there was a way she could minimize her fears, and protect herself and help others feel the same way.
All at once, under the advisement of longtime friend, Doug Krick, Patton decided to purchase a firearm and, along with her partner, Maggie Leber, start a Delaware Valley chapter of the Pink Pistols.
With her pistol and a carry permit, Patton says she doesn’t feel helpless anymore.
“One tends to think that when you take a gun in your hand, you feel 10-feet tall, that you’re going to be invincible,” she said. “It doesn’t make you feel that way, it makes you feel humble, it makes you scared at first, having a thing in your hand that if you use it wrong you could kill someone. It affects the way you think, act and feel, it moderates your behaviors ... because suddenly, you have a greater responsibility.”
The Pink Pistols’ Web site opens on a splash page with the image of a person wearing a shirt bearing the group’s logo - a silhouette of a person aiming a gun inside a pink triangle - clutching a gun and the phrase “Never Again.”
Beyond that page is another slogan, “Pick on Someone Your Own Caliber.”
Beginnings
A year and a half ago there was no such thing as the Pink Pistols, except perhaps in the mind of openly gay writer Jonathan Rauch.
In a March 2000 commentary penned for Salon.com, Rauch suggested that in response to the myriad violent anti-gay attacks suffered each year, members of the gay community should arm themselves with guns.
“Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons,” Rauch wrote. “In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry.”
In Boston, Doug Krick had already been getting together with friends to go to a local shooting range for recreation. They thought their group should have a name, and when Krick came upon the Rauch story, he quickly adopted the moniker and the first Pink Pistols chapter was born.
In addition to shooting, the group decided to get involved in politics, talking to political candidates, sending a questionnaire and documenting everything on a Web site for the world to read.
Soon, Krick was getting requests from people asking if they could be a member, or start a chapter. He realized he had stumbled upon a void in the community that others were eager to fill.
“So I said, ‘What the hell, let’s have some fun,’ “ Krick recalled. “I used to be a candidate, I ran for state rep. and had a fax list, so I sent a fax out announcing [the group] to the world, so Newsweek did a blurb, and then it sort of snowballed well beyond anything I initially thought of. Someone said, ‘I’ll do T-shirts, then someone said, ‘I’ll make pins.’ I’m more astounded than anyone else that it’s taken the route that it has.”
National movement?
A year and a half later, there are 23 chapters nationwide. Membership is open to people of all sexual orientations and identities and, according to Patton, there are many non-gay members.
The tenor of the chapters seems to be toward protection. Others, like the Delaware Valley chapter, show a melding of Krick’s initial recreational aim and Rauch’s call to arms.
“What the Pink Pistols is for, above all else, is for making people safe, and we’re trying to do it in a way that makes people safer in a responsible way,” Patton said. “We don’t want to cause trouble, we don’t want to hurt anybody - we want to do just the opposite. and I think we’ve done that wherever [a chapter] has started up. In other towns we’ve had a very positive effect, and I think we can do so here, too.”
Patton emphasizes that using a gun against a gay-basher, or any attacker is a last resort, a point reinforced to group members who are new to firearms.
“We’re not a bunch of vigilantes, we’re not Charles Bronson in ‘Death Wish,’ “ she explained. “We believe in the law, upholding the law, and defending ourselves if we are attacked is all we want to do.
“This is a medicine for a social ill ... a medicine if properly dispensed has two parts: the medicine itself, and the instructions for proper administration. The gun is the medicine, and the proper way to use it - when and why - are part of the prescription.”
But for some in the community, the idea of carrying a concealed weapon is not viewed as a reliable remedy. Although both Patton and Krick say they have found support from individual community members, community leaders are hesitant to, or will not, support their mission.
“The g/l/b/t community, obviously, encompasses all walks of life; the leadership tends to come from a smaller subsection, and that subsection generally is not welcome to the right to keep and bear arms movement, so in some ways there has been no representation for that segment of the community,” Krick said. “There is some static, and yes, we are getting some welcoming that would not be expected ... but the g/l/b/t community - some don’t like it, another section is rooting us on.”
Pink Pistol members have said they found, however, an unexpected amount of support from non-gay gun users.
“You’d think from the straight gun community we would get a negative response, we’ve actually been very welcomed by them, they’ve treated us very well with only some exceptions, mostly from the far right-wing fundamental Christians,” Patton said. “In general, the gun people tend to treat us very well, as like-minded people. We tend to be standing for the same ideals. We believe in the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms and self-defense.”
Reaction
Clarence Patton, director of community organizing and public advocacy at the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, is familiar with the violence experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people because of their identities. But he believes carrying and keeping a gun only appears to be an easy solution to a difficult social problem, and one that can end up doing more harm than good.
“I am, and we are, very anti-gun; we don’t think guns solve any problems, and may create more problems,” said Patton, who is not related to Gwen Patton. “I think I would never encourage any community I’m part of - the gay community, the African American community, the urban community - to arm itself. I don’t think that’s the answer.”
While he is aware the Pink Pistols, as part of its mission, state that guns come with responsibility, should be used as a last resort, and that members are educated and trained, Clarence Patton remains unconvinced that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people will be safer because they are armed.
“More guns mean more people get shot,” he said. “It’s not rocket science. These people walking around with guns on them - if someone calls them an epithet are they going to shoot that person?
“It’s clear the police don’t even know when to use guns, so what kind of training are these people getting?”
Clarence Patton also voiced concerns about guns getting in the hands of untrained children, and envisioned scenarios where the gun ended up in the hands of the attacker.
“A gun may not be helpful to you in certain situations: If you are on the street and someone attacks you, usually it’s from behind and your having a gun is not necessarily going to assist you,” Patton said. “The gun may ultimately be used against you: If five people are attacking you, at best, you get away with the gun, at worst you could be the victim.”
But Gwen Patton and Krick have heard these concerns before, and address them with anecdotal and statistical information they say shows where law-abiding citizens are most armed, there is the least amount of crime.
Gwen Patton reiterates the need for proper training and suggests that parents show children their gun and how it works, not only to educate, but to take away the curiosity that leads some kids to play with weapons.
“I personally think that every person that is not a criminal and is mentally sane and stable and is responsible enough to own a gun, should, for the protection of their family,” Gwen Patton said. “It’s a matter of personal responsibility.”
Stacey L. Sobel, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, which is a member of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects, said guns won’t get to the root of the problem of anti-gay violence.
“People have the right to carry guns, and should do so responsibly and within legal guidelines, however, carrying guns is not going to stop hate and will not prevent attacks,” Sobel said. “I think there needs to be continued education of the public, that gay people need to be visible in our communities so that others recognize the important part that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people play.”
Gwen Patton isn’t taking any chances.
“I have never had to use my gun on anything except a paper target and, God-willing, I never will have to use it on anything but,” she said. “I do not want to ever have to use it on a human being, but if I have to defend my life, or the life of my loved ones, I will.”
Information
What: Delaware Valley chapter of Pink Pistols
When: Meets regularly for practice and instruction
Information: Call (610) 630-9862
Web site; www.pinkpistols.org/local/delawarevalley