A long time ago, anti-gun leader Shannon Watts blocked me on Twitter, so I have no idea, most of the time, what’s she’s spewing into the social media sphere. Now, I’m glad I’m blocked. In a prolonged interaction between Watts and Bethany Mandel, the latter of which wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about why she became a gun owner. In short, neo-Nazis doxxed her and she was forced to go through the tortured process of buying a firearm in the deep-blue and anti-gun state of New Jersey.
We’ll get to that in a second, but where Watts appears to have an issue is this story from Mandel’s childhood in which her mother stopped a would-be attacker from climbing through the window, where Bethany was sleeping. Her mother armed with a rifle let the would-be intruder leave, but warned that next time he’ll be fitted with a toe tag. Mandel grew up in a trailer in upstate New York. It was common to have firearms for self-defense and for wandering bears. Mandel added that her mother was a Green Party supporter, a progressive, but owned firearms. Not your typical profile of a gun owner. The story is critical, as Bethany, now married with a family, is now acting like her mother, protecting herself and her children from threats lobbed against her by neo-Nazis:
[…]
Over the Republican primary season, I was an outspoken conservative critic of then-candidate Donald Trump, and a torrent of hate rolled my way. I would later learn just how much: The Anti-Defamation League named me one of the top 10 Jewish journalists to be attacked by the alt-right during the election season. After years of receiving death threats for my conservative views, months of being attacked by the alt-right and then having our address published online by the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, I pushed myself to finally go through the process of asking friends for letters attesting to my character, obtaining fingerprints and submitting to background checks.
[…]
The self-defense portion was what appears to have triggered Ms. Watts, the leader of Moms Demand Action, who decided to toss white privilege into the mix.
Bethany: when I was a kid, a man tried to climb in my bedroom window and my mother scared him off with a gun
Shannon Watts: that’s because you’re white pic.twitter.com/zbOl4SFUwu
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) March 6, 2018
lololol. telling a Jewish woman that she’s exercising her “white privilege” by buying a gun to protect herself from actual nazis is the most 2018 thing ever. https://t.co/XHq9mKvAhx
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) March 6, 2018
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