The head of the National Rifle Association comes up to Toronto to say gun owners everywhere face the same threat to their rights

By Mark Bonokoski, Toronto Sun, November 28, 2006


She is the antithesis of the oft-parodied image of former National Rifle Association president, actor Charlton Heston, holding an antique Revolutionary War-era muzzle loader aloft back in 2000, and warning anti-gun proponents that they'd have to pry it "from my cold dead hands."

Yet Sandy Froman is what Heston once was -- president of the four-million-strong NRA, one of the largest and most powerful lobby groups in the U.S., and only the second woman to hold that post in the NRA's 132-year history.

"And I haven't met a gun yet that I didn't like," she says.

Jewish, soccer-(grand)momish, and a West Coast lawyer now living in Tucson, Ariz., the 57-year-old Froman is is as unstereotypical as it comes when looking for the stereotypical perception of the gun crowd.

And this is not lost on the woman herself.

In Toronto over the weekend to address the national convention of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), Froman said being a victim of crime was the prime motivator for her buying her first gun.

"It's weird how life goes," she says. "If what happened to me had not have happened, I would not be here.

"But it was a life-changing experience, and I would not be president of the NRA if not for that."

It was an attempted break-in of her Los Angeles apartment when she was in her 30s, and living alone, that prompted Froman to go out the next day and sign up for firearms training.

"I never wanted to be in a position in life where I had no options," she says. "And I had no options that day. There was a man attempting to break into my apartment and I had no backup -- no means to defend myself, no way out.

"And it changed my life."

Educated at Stanford University, with her law degree coming from Harvard, Froman was practising law at the high-profile California law firm of Loeb & Loeb when she had her late-night visitation, a chance brush with lawlessness that led her, eventually, to executive positions within the NRA.

Remember Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, and his ambush interview with a feeble Charlton Heston?

"Despicable" is how Froman described Moore's actions, leaving no doubt that Moore would be unwise to come knocking on her door with the same modus operandi.

Last January, having invoked the fear factor that half the guns used to bathe Toronto in blood in 2005 were stolen from law-abiding collectors and shooters, Prime Minister Paul Martin went to the polls vowing to ban all handguns in Canada -- if constitutionally viable, that is, a caveat he later had to add when he misfired on the facts.

Toronto Mayor David Miller sang the same statistical tune, despite contrary evidence in a report tabled a month earlier by his own police service -- a report obtained through access to information that shows, if not twisted, that no more than 16% of "crime guns" in Toronto were obtained through the robbery of legitimate owners.

Sandy Froman, however, would not go there. The United States, not Canada, she said, is her political bailiwick.

"Canadians have a different mindset. We have different histories," she says. "We (Americans) are self-reliant. Independence is part of our culture. Call it frontier-ism, if you want, but we are people who want less government interference in our lives, and we believe in the Second Amendment, and our right to protect ourselves."

According to Froman, some 80 million of the 300-plus million living in the United States own firearms.

"Gun ownership has increased 25% in the last years," she says. "And violent crime has decreased by 33%.

"Tell me there is no connection?"

There was no press invited to the Canadian Shooting Sport Association's dinner Saturday, yet some did show up nonetheless, with the Toronto Star apparently sporting a bogus "invitation" allegedly sent out by kindred-spirited, anti-gun lobbyist Wendy Cukier, a Ryerson professor and president of the Canadian Coalition for Gun Control.

It was left up to Tony Bernardo, executive-director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association to let the reporter know that he had been somewhat had -- particularly since the reporter arrived thinking Cukier was his contact person.

This, in fact, was confirmed by the reporter himself.

"Cukier's name was atop the invite," says Bernardo. "And the reporter was certainly not happy about being asked to leave. But he has only one person to thank, and that's the person who sent out the phony invitation."

According to Cukier, however, the so-called "invitation" was actually a "press release" -- one, she admitted, that "might have caused some confusion" if it came down third-hand from an assignment editor to a reporter.

"I spoke to the Star," she says. "And they understand."

Got in a shot

According to Cukier, an address by the president of the NRA to a group of Canadian shooting sport enthusiasts is "something Canadians should know about."

"Which is why I put out a press release," she says.

One wonders, however, what Cukier had envisioned being so newsworthy that it required a media blitz.

For what follows is probably the most controversial thing Sandy Froman had to say her keynote speech.

"Though you don't have a Second Amendment in Canada, it is amazing how similar things are in your country and in mine when it comes to gun ownership and the fight to preserve it," she said. "You fight the same battles against the same enemies of firearms freedom that we do. You labour under the same lack of education among the general public about firearms issues.

"And you deal with the same bias in your media."

In that same speech, however, Froman did manage to get in a fairly good shot at Wendy Cukier.

It might be wise, in fact, if she obtained a copy.

mark.bonokoski@tor.sunpub.com or 416-947-2445