Pistol-Packing Mamas

Nancy Reagan had one next to the bed, and before you know it, Barbie’s wardrobe may include one. The pearl-handled hairbrush on the dressing table ofAmerican women may soon be joined by a pearl-handled revolver.

Even more important than the fact of gun ownership by women is the gun imagery in the minds and hearts of some American women legislators. The gender gap that many feminists believed was to help us achieve a kinder, gentler government has considerably narrowed. A clear majority of white women (55 percent) voted for Republican congressional candidates in the 1992 election. One of them, Helen Chenoweth of Idaho (described as a soft-voiced grandmother by the Wall Street Journal), symbolically displays a stick of dynamite alongside the “Contract With America” that she and a number of first-time women members of Congress support. Chenoweth and Representative Linda Smith of Washington have stated that they have met with militia representatives, whose membership includes a good percentage of women. In Idaho, for example, of the state’s five hundred militia activists, one-third are women.

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