Second Amendment Sisters, Inc. (SAS) is a non-partisan women's advocacy group in the United States dedicated to the protection of gun rights, specifically for the purpose of self defense. It is an all-volunteer 501(c)(4) non-profit organization based in Texas, with chapters nationwide.
SAS was founded in January 2000 by five ordinary women from around the country, in response to the media portrayal that the Million Mom March spoke for all women with regard to firearms rights. Using the Internet, these women and a handful of other volunteers staged a counter-rally in Washington, DC, on Mother's Day, May 13, 2000. In the months preceding these events, the media regularly called upon SAS to represent the equal counterpoint to the Million Mom March in print, radio and television, including a two hour televised Good Morning America town hall meeting from the White House on the Saturday before. On March 18, 2008, SAS organized the rally in support of Dick Anthony Heller's right to keep an operable handgun for self-protection in his home subject of the United States Supreme Court hearing of DC v. Heller in Washington, DC.
SAS interprets the Second Amendment as recognizing the pre-existing natural right of individuals to bear arms as tools of self-defense, and promotes gun safety and marksmanship among their members. They focus on community outreach, women's firearm shoots, women's personal safety training, and political advocacy. Citing FBI crime statistics, they assert firearms are the only reasonable means of self-protection, especially for women, people of short stature, people with disabilities, and the elderly.
Second Amendment Sisters has a featured column in Gun Week. The group's slogan is "Self defense is a basic human right."
Famous quotes containing the words amendment and/or sisters:
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
““And yonder stands my brother Hugh,
But by him my William, sweet and true.””
—Unknown. Binnorie; or, The Two Sisters (l. 51–52)