Following the unprovoked stabbing of a pregnant couple on a STL Metro Bus on October 27, 2025, I shared a post on social media, pointing out the obvious, that gun-free zones are a dangerous, often deadly lie.
Unable to shake the event from my thoughts and the emotions it invoked in me, I decided to sit down and pen an op-ed on the issue of Missouri’s public transit carry ban and how it unfairly targets and infringes upon an entire class of people – those who rely on transit. These citizens are often of lower-income, causing them to live in more dangerous neighborhoods, making their need and desire to exercise their right to carry for self-protection all the more pressing.
The op-ed ran in the STL Post-Dispatch on Sunday, November 2. The following day, a rebuttal op-ed written by Janet Hyde (professor emeritus of psychology and gender & women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Psychology of Gun Violence: How Smart Choices Can Save Lives) was published.
One thing I like to do as an advocate for our Second Amendment who testifies often on legislation being heard in committees of the Missouri General Assembly, is to listen closely to the testimonies given by those on the opposite side of the 2A issue. I use their words in my testimonies, countering them with fact to set the record straight, or to highlight their hypocrisy (which is often quite fun and usually gets turned into reels I post to further drive the message).
So, in the words that follow allow me to take Ms. Hyde’s rebuttal to my op-ed apart. Breaking it down, countering her statements, and hopefully in the end, leaving you with an example of how to not be intimidated by the “mean girl” noise that the anti-gun ladies prefer to come at us with.
Personally, I have no desire to publicly belittle or put down a woman who disagrees with me. That’s not how you sway someone to your way of thinking. There are so many women doing phenomenal 2A advocacy work who were once solidly anti-gun. As a pro-2A woman, I want my words to have the potential to change someone’s heart and mind. Even if not speaking to them directly, by the way I speak to someone who’s mind I will clearly never change, those watching will hopefully pick up on the difference between us and let down their guard long enough to hear the sense I’m making and realize that we want what they want, to keep ourselves and our families safe. It’s then they start to see how the other side has been bullying and intimidating them to stay away from us “pro-gun activists who only think of our right to have a loaded gun with us at all times.”
Oops, now I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s break this thing down, shall we? Hyde’s first jab, as alluded to above, was to lump me into the category of “like most” pro-gun activists who only think of our right to carry while “failing to recognize the right of others to freedom from guns and gun violence.”
Um, could someone show me where that “right” is listed in our Bill of Rights, please? I looked and found our right to keep and bear, but the right she speaks of here still eludes me.
Next up, “In any complex society, the rights of different groups have to be kept in balance.”
No ma’am. That is called Interest Balancing and the Supreme Court has soundly rejected interest balancing arguments in deciding Second Amendment cases.
She continued, “The gun lobby has argued so loudly for gun rights that the voices for the rights of everyone else have been drowned out.”
Okay, I literally threw my head back and laughed out loud at this one. Billions of dollars flowing into groups with massive memberships, nonstop marketing, along with their mainstream media cohorts, and don’t forget an actual office created specifically for them in the previous administration! Please.
While this statement is laughable and easily debunked, I think there’s something important here that needs to be pointed out. She is clearly miffed with the idea of an outspoken, unapologetic-in-her-views woman was even given an opportunity to have a voice go on record in the media that is supposed to be working with them. It seems they only like to engage in an open dialog and sharing of ideas when only voices from their side are allowed to participate.
To me, that means my words are seen as a threat to the hold they’ve had on women when it comes to the issue of guns and personal safety. It makes sense when you consider that women, especially minority women, are among the fastest growing demographic of new gun owners. The issue is getting away from them and they’re pulling out all the mean girl snark they can muster to shut up those of us who are out there encouraging and educating more and more women to become their own self-protectors every single day.
Back to her desire for interest balancing to rule the day: “That includes the right of people to be on a crowded bus that is free of guns. It’s the right to freedom from gun violence. As Gabby Giffords, badly wounded in an assassination attempt when she was in Congress, has said, there is a right to live.”
A lot to unpack here. Firstly, a carry ban on buses does nothing to actually keep guns off the bus. “Gun-free” is a deadly lie being that criminals, by definition, ignore laws AND overwhelmingly choose GFZ as their targets of choice. Second, still not finding the “freedom from gun violence” right anywhere in our founding documents. And last, Giffords is right, in that there is a right to life. And it just so happens, that right is so great as to be an inherent one and thankfully we have the Second Amendment to help us defend that right to live.
This next one is just dripping with condescension and belittling. This is purposely done to dissuade the women who are on the fence about firearms from even giving me the time of day, let alone listening to my perspective on the issue and considering both sides of the debate. The anti’s can’t afford to let true common sense seep into the minds of the women they desperately need to keep either in their corner or unengaged. Remember as I stated before, many of our staunchest female 2A advocates were once anti-gun. Funny how you never hear about one of us choosing to do a 180 and going over to their side. Fun fact: I pointed that out once to the Missouri rep for Moms Demand Action in the hallway of the Missouri Capitol – the look on her face was #priceless.
“Like many gun rights activists, Myers makes the potentially fatal error of imagining a scenario in which a woman on a bus is threatened and everything on her end goes perfectly. She whips out her gun and defends herself against the person who seemed to threaten her.”
Wrong. Here’s what I actually wrote.
“How different might that event have ended had just one lawful citizen been able to calmly, in a non-threatening tone and manner, let the knife-wielding woman know that she was not the only one on that bus with a weapon? Perhaps with hands raised in a surrender posture, with a simple lifting of the shirt with their non-draw hand to reveal the firearm, I suspect she would have reined in her crazy just long enough to put her knife away and get off the bus like she was told.”
No gun “whipped out” in my scenario, and it was a real-life attack on defenseless people that I was referencing, so there was no “seemed to threaten” about it. The woman stabbed two people. The reason I wrote the hypothetical armed rider scenario as I did was to share an example of how over 81.9% of all DGU (Defensive Gun Use) incidents play out with no shots fired. In only 18.1% of incidents is the gun actually fired.
Her next paragraph, “But what if that man in the hoodie actually posed no threat and she kills an innocent person? What if, in a moving bus, her aim is not perfect and she actually shoots and kills the 12-year-old seated nearby?”
There was no “man in a hoodie,” but why miss an opportunity to imply we profile? Hey, they already call us child murderers just for wanting to own a gun, so sure, throw that in there, too. The over-the-top worst case scare tactics of Ms. Hyde and others are not backed up by the facts. Concealed carriers who act in self-defense have been managing quite successfully to do so without injuring others. Proven by the fact that, were that not the case, we’d be hearing about it constantly in the media.
I separated this next sentence of hers from the previous ones, because this is a statement I’ve heard by many that I find particularly repugnant, so I wanted to address it separately. It frosts me when those who purport to speak on behalf of women proceed to condescend to them much like a misogynist or an abuser would.
Hyde wrote, “What if the perp grabs her gun and aims it at her?”
Another similar statement from Ms. Roberta (Rob) Valente when she testified at the same Senate Judiciary Committee hearing as Women for Gun Rights’ Holly Sullivan in May of 2022: “We do hear from women who would like to arm themselves. Our recommendation at the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence is that studies do show that the mere presence of a firearm in the house poses a danger. During a domestic abuse incident, research shows that the abuser is quite likely to take control of the firearm and so then put the survivor at risk.”
So this Professor of Women’s Studies and a Policy Consultant for a national DV org do their best to scare women out of having a means to defend herself or her kids. Shameful.
How about we lift up and truly empower women to take back control of their lives and their safety. If a woman (especially one in a DV situation), wants to arm herself then let’s bend over backwards to get her the training and knowledge that she needs to do so safely and proficiently.
Ugh, hang with me, there’s just a couple more paragraphs from her to go. Not worth quoting, but she points out that “highly trained” police officers sometimes accidentally shoot bystanders. “Would the woman on the bus do better than these highly trained officers,” she asks.
I don’t know. But what I do know is, she has the right to try!
Then blah blah blah – Missouri’s weak gun laws – blah blah blah. She closes with, “I personally do not want to sit down on a bus and wonder if the woman sitting next to me has a loaded gun in her bag. Do you?”
Ms Hyde, residing in Wisconsin, you might be interested to know that as a 2017 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling affirmed, cities cannot prohibit individuals with concealed carry licenses from carrying on Wisconsin’s public transportation.
Lastly, no need to concern yourself, Ms Hyde, my carry gun is always on my person, rather than in a bag.
Carry on.
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