my work here is done

Every woman in my life now either has or is considering a gun for self-defense. Many of them have gone on to get their CCW, including my mom.

I'm satisfied.

I know!

Maybe the girls of OWS should have a slut walk! Or walk in groups, rape whistles in hand. Or, hey, maybe they could all wear burqas!

Free, but not easy.

Or, perhaps, just perhaps...they could aspire to the same liberty of the Tea Party protester shown above.

(h/t Snarkybytes)

not a new thing

I know that the whole "chicks with guns" thing might seem like a recent American phenomenon (to some) but it appears that tool-using has always been a fairly international and non-gender specific pursuit.

you go, girl.

I'm not sure I know who Ann Barnhardt is, but I think I love her.

Also? this is her rifle:

Yes, really.

tiny gun is tiny

I went to the range recently and saw a little Ruger LCP, looking sad and lonely in the glass case after its original owner had resold it not two weeks after acquiring it. I was told he was a burly ham-fisted fellow (actually, the direct quote was " he had these giant sausage fingers") who, after shooting it twice, decided the LCP was a bad fit.

But for someone, say a petite, slightly curvy, librarian type person, who has trouble concealing even a Bersa Thunder .380?
It's just right.

daily arsenal

I made sure to shoot it after purchase, just to get acquainted..

first two mags - 12 rds., @25 ft.

The recoil is a bit sharp and I admit it caused my groups to spread out after about 35 rounds. I kept all 50 rounds (mostly) in the red circle which is not great, but good enough to get the job done. I'm sure I can get better with practice.

And as a carry experiment yesterday, I put on my tightest jeans, a tank top, a long sleeved tshirt, a gunbelt, my new IWB holster (which is so small I admit I laughed out loud when it arrived via UPS), and the LCP. I had a spare magazine in my front pocket. When Mike came home from work, we chatted while I puttered around in the kitchen. He kept not mentioning the gun. Finally I stood directly in front of him and asked, "Well? Notice anything?"

He looked. Looked again. Nope.

Perfect. 

Still waiting

I spent a bit of time this morning checking the news and, nope...still no blood in the streets.

(and yes, I chose that news story for a reason. Check out the gunny's last name!)

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man up, lady

"....photos of a very young girl toting a Ruger 10/22 carbine, for example, or the young woman in her wedding gown holding an antique pistol are unsettling."

Seriously?

h/t Unc

Shot placement

Range day with Mike and THOTpd!

Practiced mostly with my carry gun, the Bersa Thunder .380. This was 3 mags at about 25 ft:


I like to keep my hand in.

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bias

The Cleveland Plain Dealer should be ashamed of themselves.

Can't wait to see what they come up with when restaurant carry becomes legal in a few weeks. Gonna need some new underoos.

(By the way, congratulations to OFCC for making the City of Cleveland Heights abide by state law and standing up for our civil rights.)

tiny menace

When I saw this question over at Tam's (who saw it on RNS) I immediately knew my answer. For a very long time this song has featured prominently on my life's internal soundtrack, alongside other classics like Breakfast at Tiffany's Moon River, a Tori Amos medley, a few Irish drinking fighting songs and The Ladybugs' Picnic from Sesame Street.

Quirky fierceness for some zombie slaying? Yep, that'll do.



And in case you need a visual of the last thing ol' Zed might see when the undead SHTF?
My Buddy the Gun Enthusiast is happy to help.

Drilling (& why to try)

Newbius had brought a beautiful old long gun to Northcoast II and everyone who shot it was ooh'ing over the recoil. I hung back, watching.

Mike said, "You want to try it?" He was grinning.

I demurred. No, no. Too much for little ol' me. Alan nodded. "Do it." Everyone was looking at me expectantly.

Fine. I'll shoot anything once, or at least try - I had promised myself that long ago.

*language warning*


Uh..okay. I guess I'll try again.



And yes, I liked it so much, I DID shoot it again. 
(3rd video and excellent NCII AAR at New Jovian Thunderbolt's blog. Go see!)

say hello to my little friend

Open carry in DTW.

ambassador

NancyR demonstrates why more women need to be out and proud about gun ownership.

Angel* gets her wings

Monday night I met up with a few friends from the library. I was the last to arrive and as I made my way to the table, I noticed that Holly (who I don't see nearly often enough now that she's moved on from the library) was rummaging around in her purse and pulled out a stack of what looked like business cards. She shuffled through them, found the one she was looking for, and put it down on the table in front of me.

I picked it up. It wasn't a business card.

"No!" I gasped. "No WAY!"

Holly nodded. "Yep. I did it about two weeks ago."

Holly had her CCW.

As I grinned and offered my congratulations, she said, "This is thanks to you."

(Well, shucks, ma'am.)

I think this calls for a little One Girl Revolution...


...and Buffy, because she totally kicks ass.
And, you know what? So do we.

______________________

*Angel N. Shadows is Holly's roller derby name.

Dragon Leatherworks

Things that have been made skillfully and thoughtfully by hand have an incomparable beauty - and something that's been custom made especially for you by a talented craftsman is quite a treasure indeed. That's why I'm pleased to be able to endorse the Talon holster from Dragon Leatherworks.

(please enlarge photos for clearer detail)

The Talon, originally designed with the 1911 in mind, was a perfect choice for my Bersa Thunder .380. It wears comfortably (even with a skirt, ladies!) and the surprising amount of retention this holster offers, along with its amazing good looks, makes it a perfect option for open carry.


My Dragon Leatherworks Talon is one of a kind but because each is made by hand from gorgeous high quality leather, one at a time, with extraordinary attention to detail - yours will be too.


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Soon, my gunnies. Soon.

Any day now, the streets of Ohio will be awash with blood.
(Okay. Not really.)

Man down

A music video depicting a victim of a sexual assault turned vigilante has stirred up quite a bit of controversy:

“A graphic portrayal of the singer getting back at an attacker by shooting him in cold blood in a crowded train station and then fleeing the scene is potentially the worst possible message that could be sent,” Melissa Henson, director of communications and public education for the PTC, expressed.

I totally agree. A much better message would have been to show a would-be rapist getting shot before the act could even be completed...

Photo courtesy of Oleg Volk

without all due respect

A photograph of me (taken by my husband, with my iPhone) has been saved and reproduced by a member the GunUp Blogger Network and 2011 winner of the Luckygunner Up & Comer Gunnie Award. I'm sure he thought himself clever to title his post "Breda Porn" and began salivating over all the traffic, and resulting blog revenue, certain Google searches might bring him. In short, he is using my copyrighted material for monetary gain, without my permission.

And now, if that's not bad enough, my photograph is one of the first things people will see if they search for that specific term (please don't) - something I find totally unacceptable.

I have asked that this blogger remove the post because I daresay he wouldn't blog a photo of his mother, his sister, his daughter or his wife under a similar title. Yet my (multiple) requests have been ignored. My husband Mike left a comment on the post expressing his displeasure, but it seems to have been deleted.

So. What to do?

OC report

I'd like to be able to say that nothing at all happened on the 1st Annual OC Nonevent but something did. But even then, that really wasn't much of a big deal, either.

I went to Walmart and was told, by a woman I assume is an employee, that I needed to cover my gun. She told me that the store has a "no open weapons" sign on the door and I needed to pull my shirt over my gun. So, not wanting to cause a fuss on Nonevent Day, I complied. I then proceeded to walk through the store with a big gun-shaped lump under my tank top.

But really - who could blame her, right? This is how scary I looked:

Tiny woman in a skirt! With a gun! And a ponytail! (the bigger deal here was the skirt, trust me)

Anyway, the five remaining minutes Mike and I were in the store were spent asking each other,"Is there a sign? I've never seen a sign. Did you see a sign?"

We checked on the way out. No sign. And besides, a "cover up your gun" sign doesn't technically exist in Ohio. She could have asked me to leave if the building had it been posted with a "gun free zone" sign, but there wasn't one of those either.

So I guess I'll be writing a letter to Walmart corporation, asking them to remind the store manager of their open carry policy, which is to follow state laws.

After Walmart, I went inside a gas station to buy some diet coke and chips then we went for a walk in the park. We saw gigantic tadpoles and I think I might have gotten about eleventy million freckles but nothing else happened. Then we bought iced teas at the coffeehouse and walked around downtown Willoughby.

I then went home and ate some blueberry birthday pie, still a bit miffed that I had to hide my pretty new Dragon Leatherworks holster.

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gunbunnies

Our customer base is pretty heavily male as you can imagine. I’d guess 85% male. So the forward facing person for the website is a woman named Heidi. Blonde, cute, knows a lot about guns and so from a . . . the guys love her essentially. And all the emails that go out they come from Heidi. So you build a brand there’s a hot chick over here on this site who’s talking about guns and ammo, which I love, versus this site over here that doesn’t even have the stuff in stock and I’m going to come over here, look at the hot chick and buy guns and ammo. Which is perfect. We want them here on our site, which is the one with the hot chick, guns and ammo. That’s cool.  -Brian Crane

And that actually is cool - as a money making scheme, anyway. I mean, how many bottles of crappy "lite" American beer have been sold only because some half-drunk knucklehead in a dive bar saw an ad with a smiling blonde holding a frosty amber brew conveniently next to her brand new pair of rock hard knockers*, right?  Marketing to the basest nature of your customers' humanity is a winning sales strategy, I guess. 

So, sure...I understand gunbunnies. Or Sniper Babes, or Hot Shots, or Ammo Girls...or whatever you want to call them. Paid to be the pretty giggle and jiggle that will hopefully hypnotize gun nuts into forking over cash. If a little tits and ass makes a guy buy more bang and brass then hooray, capitalism! I get it. Really. But I don't have to like it.

Companies that employ this tactic perpetuate the "guns are a guy thing" myth that for so long has kept women away from the gun culture and, consequently, the most reliable self defense tools available. A company that hires gunbunnies to work a highly publicized blog shoot creates an optics problem for those of us trying to convince potential new (& sometimes nervous, sometimes reluctant) female shooters that, no, really, you'll be comfortable at the range, it's not like a boys' club at all, I promise.**

And so we are working at cross-purposes.

But, of course, gunbunnies are women too and for many of them working events such as these might be a first, wonderful taste of the gun culture - I just hope the next time one of them picks up a gun isn't because some guy paid them to do it in a miniskirt.

_________________

*I like to call this "shitty titty beer"

** Also, really? Is possibly alienating a large and powerful portion of American consumers a wise business decision, especially when an unprecedented number of women are purchasing firearms?