Spitting, Stalking, Rape Threats: How Gun Extremists Target Women

The Female Mannequin Firing Squad

Open Carry Texas takes pains to convey a clean, friendly image in the press. Last November, the group made national news after some 40 members armed with assault rifles showed up outside an Arlington, Texas, restaurant where four women from Moms Demand Action were having lunch. The group released a statement saying it was being misunderstood: "In reality, the peaceful gun owners were posing for a photo." After a rally outside Austin City Hall this April, Grisham told the Texas Tribune, "We're not out there to bait police officers or to scare the community. We wave, we smile, we hand out fliers. If we see someone who seems really nervous, we’ll talk to them."

What the group hasn't publicized are some of its members' more degrading antics. In March, a group of them held a "mad minute" at a firing range, pulverizing a female mannequin with a hail of bullets. They positioned the figure with her hands raised in surrender, naked from the waist up. Afterward, they posed with the bullet-riddled mannequin, her arms blown off and her pants down at her ankles. "Mad minute" is a military expression referring to a burst of rapid fire, and Open Carry Texas members have often referred to Moms Demand Action as "mad moms."

Four of the men who shot up the mannequin were present at the Arlington restaurant, including one listed by Open Carry Texas as a board member and the group's Director of Operations.

Grisham said he was not part of the group at the gun range, but when the mannequin video was posted on Facebook, he commented: "Warms the cockles of my heart." Recently he called women from Moms Demand Action "ignorant, retarded people," and last fall he referred to them as "thugs with jugs."