Gun control advocates took one on the chin with yesterday’s publication of a TIME article about five-time Olympic medal winner Kim Rhode in which the champion shotgunner made this stunning observation:
“The Second Amendment was put in there not just so we can go shoot skeet or go shoot trap. It was put in so we could defend our first amendment, the freedom of speech, and also to defend ourselves against our own government.”
That amounts to a smackdown for the gun prohibition lobby. Anti-gunners had a hard enough time choking down the fact that America’s first gold medal in Rio came last Saturday to a female air rifle shooter in the 10-meter competition. Nineteen-year-old Ginny Thrasher aced the competition, setting a new record in the process.
The 37-year-old Rhode, who will vie for a sixth-straight Olympic medal on Friday in Rio, is a role model with whom anti-gunners probably shouldn’t tangle. She’s not a “soccer mom,” she’s a “shotgun mom,” and thanks to her accomplishments, when she talks, a lot of people listen.
The TIME article came on the heels of Rhode’s interview with veteran writer Frank Miniter that appeared in Forbes. In that piece, she talked about her strategy for winning. It was a rather inspirational piece, and can only add to her prominence.
There was also an interview she did with the Olympic Channel that may be viewed here on YouTube. That short video covers her wins over the years, and shows a full dedication to her sporting endeavor.
Rio will be Rhode’s sixth straight Olympic Games. A resident of California, she told TIME that she hopes her three-year-old son will grow to enjoy the shooting sports as he gets older.
“I hope to have him out there shooting, when he becomes of age,” she told TIME’s Sean Gregory. “I started when I was like 7 or 8 years old, and it was something that was a big deal in my family, to gain that right of passage.”
Rhode was matter-of-fact when she said there is “a stigma attached to our sport.” With gun control being a center piece of this year’s presidential campaign that started long before GOP candidate Donald Trump made his controversial remark the other day about Democrat Hillary Clinton and the Second Amendment, the media seems to be working overtime to highlight that stigma.
They will have a tough time with Rhode, who suggested to TIME that she was heartbroken about the terror attack in San Bernardino. However, she said that and similar incidents “make me want to carry even more.”
She suggested new gun control legislation recently passed in California is misguided, the magazine said. Rhode does a lot of shooting, and now she’ll have to suffer through background checks every time she buys ammunition, “or bring it in or out of a competition or a match” is going to be a burden. And that requirement will not prevent any crimes.
Rhode also noted that guns that have been in her family for generations will now have to be registered as “assault weapons.”
All of this reportedly makes Rhode even more willing to speak out, according to TIME.
