OKAY, nobody from the Pink Pistols who was at the NRA conference has answered my call. I’m still trying to scare someone up and get their version, since the PlanetOut piece I referenced earlier seemed to be trying pretty hard to gin up a scandal. I did get this email, though, from a reader who asks to remain anonymous but who I know and regard as entirely credible:

A few months ago I founded a chapter of Pink Pistols in San Francisco, of all places. This led to an appearance on the BBC tv show “That Gay Show” (we taught their spokesguy how to shoot – and here’s a direct quote when he fired my Taurus PT145 for the first time [into the ten ring, I might add]: “Cut! (stop cameras) Holy…fucking…shit!!!” I think we made a convert…) as well as a meeting with Carol Migden, the local (lesbian) state rep for SF district, and other interesting conflations – including a *lot* of interaction with the local NRA chapter.

I must confess to initial trepidation. I mean, the NRA? But I was wrong. What a great bunch of people. They were far, *far* more interested in how people felt about RKBA than what they did with each other in bed. Several of the local officers told me how glad they were to see PP get started, because they’d been trying gay outreach for years with no luck.

Even the (extremely) straight guys who own and run our only local urban shooting range not only were tolerant, they were positively welcoming, and even offered us a place to hold our meeting before our monthly shoots, rent free.

As things stand now, I’d quicker turn to the NRA for help in a pinch than I would to the local gay establishment here. Yes, I imagine there are troglodytes here and there in the NRA (as anywhere) but I can’t stand Rosie either, the fat freakazoid. So does that make me anti-gay too?

I think after decades in the wilderness, the NRA people may have more sympathy for “outsiders” than most people realize. Their issue is guns — and that is going to have more to do with how they view people than almost anything else. Or so it seems to me.

Well, that doesn’t specifically answer the question of what Debbie Schlussel, etc., said at the NRA Convention, but I suspect that it’s at least as representative.