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The Chicago Tribune

Double-Check Your Safety Measures

by Judy Sutton, compiled by Wendy Navratil and Cassandra West

Author and gun expert Paxton Quigley says women need to have a better defense strategy than dialing 911.

"I'm not paranoid, I'm watchful," says Quigley, who spoke at a Chicago rally recently. "I'm prudent in taking care of myself. In a world where there is random crime, there are certain (precautionary) measures that should be taken." But you don't have to own a gun to adapt some of Quigley's tactics:

- Create a "safe room" in your home to protect you from intruders, either your bedroom, or, if you have children, the bedroom of your youngest child, she says. She suggests installing a deadbolt and keeping a cell phone and pepper foam there, out of children's reach.

- Take different routes to and from work, and vary the times you leave and return home. "And if you suspect someone is following you, don't go home," she says. "If there's not a police station nearby, seek help at a restaurant, or somewhere else that is public and crowded."

- If you travel for business, "..keep a man's necktie or hat in the car so it appears you're not traveling alone," she suggests. In hotels, request a room by the elevator.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Women are Giving Guns a Shot

by Plain Dealer reporter Michele M. Melendez

"Owners and managers of gun ranges in Northeast Ohio say they have noticed more women than ever taking firearms instruction, and in response to the trend, have even introduced Ladies' Nights that allow women to shoot free.

They can't say for sure what's behind the boom, but they and others interested in using guns for self-defense have their guesses.

Maybe women are less afraid of guns than their mothers or grandmothers were. Maybe women are looking for another way to protect themselves. Maybe they are just curious.

Jenny Bartell, 24, of Parma, signed up for a gun safety and training course this summer because she wanted to start a hobby. By the time she left the six-hour handgun safety and training course though, she was thinking of guns as defensive tools. "When they started talking about self-defense, I started really thinking about it for myself," she said.

Julianne Vargus, 33, of Brunswick Hills, knew before she took a firearms course about five years ago that she was doing it to take control of her safety. "I wanted to make sure that if I was by myself, I could protect myself," she said.

Ohio does not allow a person to carry a concealed firearm, unless the weapon is necessary for work. The law confines the use of guns for self-defense to the home.

Yet the law has not stopped some women from carrying guns illegally, says self-defense expert Paxton Quigley, who sold out two Cleveland-area appearances on gun safety for women. "Even though it's illegal [to carry a gun in some states], there are some women who say, 'Hey, I'm not nuts. If I'm traveling, I'm in jeopardy,' " she said.

Quigley, a former bodyguard to Yoko Ono who also taught actress Geena Davis to shoot for "Thelma and Louise," offers self-defense strategies in her two books, "Armed & Female" (St. Martin's Press, $5.99) and "Not an Easy Target: Paxton Quigley's Self-Protection for Women" (Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster, $11).

Less Afraid of Firearms

"Women are becoming less afraid of firearms, because they're learning more about them," said Bill Bash, owner of Royal Ridge Shooters Supply and Gunsmithing, which adjoins the Flashpoint Range in Brunswick Township. "It's an educational process." Flashpoint started a free Friday Ladies' Night two years ago. Bash said a growing number of women are taking advantage of the price break.

Stonewall Ltd. Semi-Arms Inc. of Broadview Heights, where Quigley spoke, has had Ladies' Nights the past few summers that have become increasingly popular, said corporation President Diane Donnett. So have the range's safety and training courses, she said.

Donnett, whose classes often have equal numbers of women and men, tells her female students they cannot rely solely on guns. "There's only a 3 percent chance that the gun is going to be there when you need it," Donnett said. "They've got to have other outlets. They have to practice other things for self-defense."

Likewise the National Rifle Association, known for its staunch protection of the right to bear arms, developed a self-defense program for women in 1993 that does not focus on firearms. "We teach common-sense strategies women can use to make themselves safer," said Patricia Hylton, manager of the NRA's Refuse To Be A Victim program.

Donnett, of Stonewall Ltd., said every woman needs to consider all her self-defense options seriously and decide whether she is dedicated enough to practice how to handle shoot and store a gun safely.

"I tell my ladies, 'If you're going to buy a gun to keep it locked up in a box and never take it out and never practice shooting it, then don't buy a gun,' " she said. "You can protect yourself with a gun, but you can hurt yourself with a gun if you don't know what you're doing."

The Wall Street Journal - Letter to the Editor

A Girl's Best Friend

"... if all the Loris of this country would sit down for an hour with my friend Dr. Suzy Gratia, whose parents were shot in the Luby's Cafeteria massacre, they might change their view. If they would read Paxton Quigley's book Armed and Female, they might see the light.

Paxton was a militant anti-gun activist. She helped John Glenn found the National Committee for Handgun Control. After years of seeing the failure of gun control, she did a dramatic 180-degree turn. In her book, she tells the story of a woman who was abducted and thrown into the trunk of a car. During the ride, the man kept yelling to her the things he was going to do to her.

He stopped and opened the trunk. The lady victim emptied her handgun, aiming at the abductor's chest. End of story."

The Wall Street Journal - Editorial Page

Why Feminists Should Be Trigger Happy

by Washington, DC attorney Laura Ingraham

"... Smith & Wesson and the NRA are doing more to 'Take Back The Night' than the National Organization for Women and Emily's List...

"... feminists who champion the cause of women's empowerment, should have no problem with those whose empowerment includes a firearm for personal protection. Instead, well-known feminists and feminist groups have gone out of their way to disdain this trend, even publicly disavowing previously "acceptable" writers like Naomi Wolf when she hailed women's gun ownership as a positive trend...
"If feminists are serious about ending what they see as the subjugation fo women, they will shelve their political agendas long enough to recognize that women who chose to become responsible gun owners, are, in their own way, feminist trailblazers..."

Investor's Business Daily - Page One

Self-Defense Guru Paxton Quigley

"... A Chicago native now based in Los Angeles, this divorced mother of two with a master's degree in anthropology has built a successful firm that teaches self-defense to women. She taught Geena Davis to shoot for the movie "Thelma and Louise." A gun has always been a symbol of a man and something women have been brought up to fear," she told Investor's Business Daily. "My job is to take away that fear."
"Quigley's own story is that of an anti-gunner who slammed into painful reality...

"A volunteer in Robert Kennedey's 1968 presidential campaign, she was traumatized by the senator's assassination and worked for the passage of federal gun control legislation. She was also a volunteer in setting up the first gun-control political action committee, the Emergency Committee for Gun Control.
"What changed her mind? In 1986, she says, a close friend of hers was raped. Quigley drover her to the hospital. Seeing the physical and psychological trauma her friend went trhough, Quigley said she "was determined this would never happen to me."
"Quigley then began thinking about how she would defend herself if she were attacked. She visited California's San Quentin prison to talk with hard-core rapists. She said she found that most of them would have been deterred if their victims had been armed..."

Investor's Business Daily - Page One

Get Tough On Crime With Safety Courses

"... Arguably the most aggressive course is Personal Protection Strategies, offered by Paxton Quigley Enterprises in Beverly Hills, Calif. It's a daylong course, for $150 plus a $24 range fee, that teaches women and couples how to use handguns and nonlethal sprays. If you don't have your own weapon, you're supplied with a Smith & Wesson gun for the day. Classes are limited to 20 participants.
"Quigley is also promoting a line of personal protection products through a catalog called Nobody's Fool, Nobody's Victim (800-800-1011) which is heavily laced with advice from her two books Armed and Female and Not an Easy Target.
"Quigley switched from actively being anti-gun to promoting gun ownership after driving a friend who had been raped to the hospital in 1986. Since 1990, she has taught gun safety to more than 5,000 women.
"It's been an awakening as more and more women are coming to view guns as a deterrent," she said. "Those who are traditionally anti-gun tend to be big-city dwellers with a liberal background. But once confronted with a violent incident, their viewpoint often changes just like mine did.
"I also get women who realize that although their husbands have guns in the house, they wouldn't know how to use them if the occasion arose."
Quigley makes no apologies for her aggressive approach to self-defense. "If more women owned handguns and that fact were publicized, rapes would go down in this country," she said.
To find a similar course in your area, contact a victims' rights group, a rape crisis center or domestic violence hotline. The local police will not give you such referrals..."

The Washington Times

Nationally Syndicated Columnist Mike Royko writes:

"...If every woman in every big, high-crime community in America had a gun in her purse or strapped to her thigh, we would have a safer, more courteous society. ...At one time my left knee might have jerked. That was when I thought reasonable gun control laws would reduce violent crime. But I've noticed something that should be fairly obvious. With all the gun laws we have, the bad guys still have guns and use them to shoot the good guys.
...[Some say that] only a small percentage of violent crimes against women are committed by strangers. To a woman who awakens to see a stranger crawling through her window and heading toward her bed, he is not a small percentage. He is a 100 percent fiend. But if she had a pistol under her pillow and knew how to use it, she could make him a 100 percent corpse. And the world would be a far better place.
"...Imagine, if you will, that men were society's prime rape targets. Imagine a society in which a small and mild-mannered man could not get off a bus at night and walk down a dark city street toward his home without fearing that he would encounter a large hulk with a knife who would demand the privilege of engaging in what used to be called buggery."

"Well, I'll tell you what the result would be. Men would not ask for workshops and self-esteem counseling or wear rape whistles around their necks. They would demand the right to protect themselves, politicians would promptly respond, and it would soon be legal to pack mini-cannons in our belts..."

What do YOU think?

E-mail us your views and experiences!

Share them with the world (we'll use your first name only) in our Empowerment Stories