October 20, 2000

Guns don't kill people, gay-bashers do. So says Doug Krick.

A card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association, Krick is sure liberals have it all wrong when they blame guns for cultural violence. That Krick lives in liberal Boston makes him an atypical NRA member all by itself, but Krick is even more rare among the pro-gun legion, because he is a bisexual who would legalize marriages involving three or more people. Put together, the pieces of these scattershot philosophies add up to one truth about Doug Krick: he is a Pink Pistol.

And he's not the only one - there are now 20 like Krick in the Boston area, give or take - people united by the dual fact of their minority-status sexuality and their belief in an inalienable constitutional right to bear arms. The group calls itself the Pink Pistols, and their mission is to expand gun ownership and protect firearm rights among the "alternative sexuality" communities, including gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and sado-masochists. Since the Pink Pistols formed in June, the group has been going shooting together about once a month, giving each other rides to various firing ranges in the suburbs north and south of the city.

According to Krick, some members of the Pistols have been into guns for a long time. For them, shooting is a fun sport and a way to recreate with friends. But Krick says others in the group are interested in guns because of their sexuality, not despite it. They want to make gay bashing dangerous in Boston.

Krick got the idea to start the Pink Pistols last March, when he read an article in the online magazine Salon, by writer Jonathan Rauch. In it, Rauch wrote about a gay man he knew who believed his life was saved by a gun one night, when he and another man were set upon in a parking lot by four young men shouting "faggots, get AIDS and die." The gay man's companion quickly produced a concealed pistol and leveled it at their aggressors, who turned and fled.

"Gay-bashing is a kind of low-level terrorism designed to signal that, whatever the law may say, queers are pathetic and grotesque. Beyond a certain point, therefore, the law can't be the answer," Rauch wrote in Salon. Roach is an openly gay writer who writes for the conservative Brookings Institution and once penned a column for the New Republic criticizing hate-crimes laws from a gay point of view.

In his Salon article, Rauch pointed to the work of John R. Lott, Jr., an economist at the University of Chicago Law School who published a lengthy study last year claiming to prove that concealed weapons, when lawfully carried by blacks and women - members of society especially vulnerable to violence - made them statistically safer.

Of course, other gun crime experts say Lott's conclusions are completely wrong, which Rauch himself pointed out. The numbers weren't really a problem for Rauch, because he had another, less tangible and perhaps more compelling argument for why gays should carry guns. He said that guns can do the same things for gays that they did for Jews who settled Israel after World War II: liberate them from the image, often internalized, that they are helpless weaklings.

"Israel changed the way Jews see themselves, and it changed the ways gentiles see Jews," wrote Rauch. "You can hate Israel all you like, but you don't bully it.

"So, it is remarkable that the gay movement in America has never seriously considered a strategy that ought to be glaringly obvious...In those states [where legal], homosexuals should embark on an organized effort 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. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible."

Reading in Boston, Krick took the Pink Pistols missive and ran. Hanging out in his gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community here in Boston, he talked up the idea at some parties, made some calls, and a few weeks later he and five friends found themselves firing rounds at a local firing range.

Krick, a 30-year-old Chicago transplant who's lived in Boston for more than three years, has a job on a technical support team for a dot.com company, often working the night shift. He says he learned how to shoot guns as a Boy Scout, but that prior to forming the Pink Pistols he hadn't fired a gun in almost two decades.

"Hey, this is a fun thing," he said. "Me and some other friends figured we should get together and try it, that whatever else, it would be a lot of fun."

Beyond fun, Rauch's message was a natural fit for Krick politically, because Krick is a libertarian - the personal-freedom party. He is currently working on Carla Howell's campaign to unseat Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate, and is himself a former Libertarian candidate, having run unsuccessfully in January 1999 for a seat in the state legislature, representing his home district of Hyde Park.

Krick used the state Libertarian Party's e-mailing list to advertise the Pistols, as well as that of the state Republican Party and several GLBT-interest groups. Then he created a Web site, www.pinkpistols.org, which greets visitors with the admonition to "Pick on someone your own caliber."

Nearly half a year later, Krick says the site has helped build a membership of about 20 in Boston, and is responsible for 30 other enthusiasts across the country who are now spawning Pink Pistol groups in Baltimore, Minnesota, Northern Virginia and New Mexico.

Krick also learned of another GLBT shooting group, in the Seattle suburb of Mill Creek, which existed prior to Rauch's exhortation to arms. The group is called Cease Fear, and there are interesting similarities between the two. Both organizations were begun online by middle class GLBTs who work in the hi-tech industry. Writing about Cease Fear for the online newspaper Seattle Weekly last June, Knute Berger described a organization composed partly of longtime gun enthusiasts who just happen to be gay, and partly of self-described gun-owning liberals.

Liberals and libertarians seem unlikely bed partners, but David Rostcheck says the mix works where gay rights and gun rights overlap. Rostcheck, a Pink Pistol, is an NRA member and also a self-avowed "true, dyed-in-the-wool, work-for-social-change liberal." He says that, aside from flying in the faces of the creators of the Constitution, gun control laws are racist, sexist and classist in today's America.

"The Democrats have co-opted the queer movement and soldered it together with gun control, when gun control is directly contrary to the interests of GLBT people," says Rostcheck, who plans to vote for Ralph Nader for president in November.

Rostcheck, 30, is a busy man, dividing his time between jobs as a software engineer and as president of Boston's Bisexual Resource Center. He says his work for the resource center and for various social justice causes puts him in regular contact with politicians in Arlington, where Rostcheck, who is bisexual, lives with his girlfriend.

He comes across as intelligent and self aware, with an open manner and a soft, insistentvoice. He plays guitar and owns several of them, and he owns five guns - his two favorites being his .22 caliber Smith and Wesson and a Colt .45 semiautomatic handgun. Rostcheck says he would probably shoot someone to defend himself if he had to, perhaps in a moment similar to one he recalls in which he says a friend was attacked in a bar in Cambridge by a skinhead.

"Liberals can be very unaccepting - there are valid reasons to shoot, and to use a gun in self defense," he says. "I think we like to pretend that everyone has the same ability to defend themselves or the same likelihood of being attacked, and that's simply not true. Listen, if you're transgendered, it's not a joking matter. If you're six feet tall and have stubble, and you're wearing a dress, you are running a severe risk of being beaten or killed."

His chief complaint is with the major changes that were made to state's gun licensing regulations in 1998, which resulted in Massachusetts becoming the state with the strongest gun control laws in the nation. One of the results of the 1998 amendments is that local police chiefs have the sole discretionary right to decide what citizens in a district can carry a gun, whether or not they meet all the criteria.

Rostcheck says the law legalizes arbitrary discrimination, as police chiefs now use the power to deny licenses to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals. There is an element of irony involved, according to Rostcheck, because the greatest single force behind the 1998 gun regulation amendments was Cheryl Jacques, a state senator from Needham who announced she was gay this year while amidst a reelection campaign. She was easily reelected.

For her part, Jacques refused to discuss gun control as a gay issue when contacted for this story.

"It's nothing I haven't heard before from the pro-gun people," she says.

Asked whether gays in Massachusetts might not be safer if they could brandish a gun when attacked, she responded "I'm not a criminal expert. I know that statistically that can cut both ways, and I believe the statistics say that more often than not when you use a gun to defend yourself it's ultimately used against you. All I know is that the law that I was the chief senate sponsor of doesn't stop any lawful citizen ... who feel[s] they need a handgun to protect themselves. Unless they're a convicted felon, if they're a wanted fugitive, if they have convictions for domestic abuse and so on, then yes, they will be blocked, and as it should be."

Stating they want to be able to endorse politicians who support their mission, the Pink Pistols recently sent every elected official in Massachusetts a questionnaire asking their positions on issues such as gay marriage, and the unrestricted right to bear arms. Needless to say, Jacques has not responded to the survey; in fact, only one in the state office has: Cele Hahn, a Republican representative for the Berkeshire town Westfield. (She scored 91 out of a possible 100 points - a very good grade, so far as the Pink Pistols are concerned).

The questionnaire has some no-win questions, from a political standpoint. In addition to asking whether the politicians support the sale of hollow-point bullets and the legalization of marriages involving three or more people, one question specifically asks the politicians to pick sides in a recent controversy that made headlines this summer, pitting local police against sex-fetishists in a civil rights case that has not yet gone to trial.

On Saturday, July 8, 2000, in Attleboro, police entered a sadomasochist and bondage party attended by about 30 adults, allegedly without a search warrant, and arrested two people: the organizer of the event, and a woman who police said they had seen spanking someone with a wooden spoon.

The survey question about "Paddleboro," as it was later dubbed, is interesting because it appears that, aside from an ideological investment, members of the Pink Pistols may have a personal stake in the outcome. Rostcheck at least is connected to the incident through Sabrina Santiago, who used to work at the Bisexual Resource Center, and is now a founder of the Paddleboro Defense League, aimed at securing funds for the legal representation of Benjamin Davis, the man charged with organizing the party. Davis faces jail time if convicted.

Krick is hesitant to discuss his group's connection to the Attleboro incident, but he says that "probably every one of us [in the Pink Pistols] knows someone who was there. We've been asked not to talk about it, because the case is still pending in court."

To the extent that the Pink Pistols are involved in sadomasochism, they are unlike of many other members of the GLBT community. Yet rather than denouncing the Pistols for misrepresenting the larger community, virtually every GLBT organization contacted for this story said the Pink Pistols have the same rights under the law as anyone, or chose not to comment at all.

"We've long known that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community is very diverse, and includes all types of people who have all types of political views," says Jeremy Pittman, chairman of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Political Alliance of Massachusetts. "In terms of [the Pink Pistols'] actual message, I think it's a minority viewpoint within the gay and lesbian community. I think most people in the community are probably not in favor of the view that we should be able to carry concealed weapons in order to respond to violence directed against us. I personally believe that what's needed are stricter hate crimes laws, better education at all levels about gay and lesbian people and about diversity and tolerance. I'm not sure that responding to violence with violence is the right approach, but that's surely a battle that will be fought in the political arena."

Twenty Pink Pistols aside, it's a safe bet to figure that Pittman's feelings about guns and gays more closely reflects the moral majority in the gay community; the Pink Pistols may be loud, but they are still fringe.

But that could change. In the last few weeks, the organization has almost doubled its membership, and has gotten a lot of press attention. Bay Windows, New England's largest gay-issues newspaper, wrote a story about the Pistols on Wednesday, Sept. 6; the group grabbed a mention in Newsweek on Monday, Sept. 18; and founder Doug Krick has been interviewed on a string of talk radio shows in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Port St. Lucy, Topeka, and on local station WBZ 1030 AM on Sept. 12.

But perhaps most telling was the recent decision of the Woburn Sportsmen's Association's twelve board members, who voted unanimously to allow the Pink Pistols into their club.

In trying to figure out whether the Pistols will be embraced by the mainstream the way they are being embraced by the shooting community, it may be helpful to look west, to the group in Seattle who are ahead in the game, having started earlier. Last fall, Cease Fear held classes called "Refuse to be a Victim," a program developed by the NRA, which was cosponsored in part by the Microsoft Gun Club, the Jewish Defense League and the Libertarian Party.

And what does the Pink Pistols progenitor, writer Jonathan Rauch, think of the group in Boston? In a phone conversation from his home in Washington, D.C., Rauch said he was surprised to hear they existed at all.

"I'm just a writer, I'm not an organizer. Primarily, I hoped to get gay people to think in a different way about issues like hate crime and self defense. I certainly did not expect to hear that Pink Pistol groups were forming," said Rauch. "I guess it's part of an evolution, but it's an important step. So many people who are comfortable around guns are not comfortable around gays. This shows that there's not an unbridgeable cultural divide."