Earlier this month in the basement of a Baptist church in the Cincinnati suburb of Roselawn, nearly 180 women gathered to talk about gun safety, self-defense and the Second Amendment, but you didn’t see anyone from the gun control crowd lauding this effort.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the New Prospect Baptist Church “is home to one of the largest black congregations in Cincinnati.” Alerted to the event, 200 women signed up for the event, the newspaper reported, and 179 actually showed up despite a morning snow that made driving conditions tricky.
The effort got the attention of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which said in a news release the event “redefined the term ‘woke’.”
“We’ve heard lots of rhetoric over the years about ‘common-sense gun safety,’ but this event in Cincinnati was genuine gun safety in action,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “This event was designed to familiarize women with firearms and their safe use, and I was genuinely impressed by the attendance. Good for these ladies and good for the church for allowing this class to be held.”
The newspaper said the course was the brainchild of the Rev. Damon Lynch III, pastor of the church, and Cincinnati City Councilman Jeff Pastor, who started “spreading the word” back in January. When the class finally convened, the newspaper said Pastor showed up wearing a T-shirt with the message “All gun control is racist.”
It’s a subject that has been written about by some of the leading authorities on gun rights in the United States. Twenty-five years ago, historian Clayton Cramer authored an essay published online by the Constitution Society headlined “The Racist Roots of Gun Control.”
More recently, Second Amendment scholar David Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute, bylined an article at Encounter Books website, taken from his book “The Truth About Gun Control.”
While gun control history is worth researching, proper gun control in the hand was more what the Cincinnati course was all about. According to the newspaper report, “Over and over, the women cited the same reason for coming to the class. They were tired of being scared – of guns, of being alone in a home, of walking in some neighborhoods.”
One woman told the newspaper she was always scared of her husband’s firearms, “she asked him to get rid of them when they got married two years ago,” and he did. But now, she is “working to conquer her fear.” That woman’s sister brought her to the class, an opportunity she “jumped at.”
From Gottlieb’s perspective, such events are a good way to dispel fears about firearms and to provide some solid training.
He said CCRKBA supports firearms training, “and we can only applaud all of those who attended the nine-hour course because they reportedly faced some unpleasant weather to get there.”
This may have been the largest concealed carry class ever offered in the state, the newspaper indicated. Training was donated by Arm the Populace, a firearms training company in Cincinnati, the newspaper said.
Gottlieb suggested that the interest shown in the Cincinnati event is an indication the political pendulum is beginning to swing back “toward true common sense.” This course provided women with the opportunity to “get past the demonization and fear mongering about firearms” that seems so prevalent in recent years.
“Whether the people who attended this course just wanted to know about firearms safety, or learn the fundamentals necessary to defend themselves, they can be justifiably proud of themselves, and so are we,” he said.
