During an October 14, 2005, appearance on Late Night With Conan O’Brien, country music legend Dolly Parton recounted pulling a gun from her purse when she was younger to stop an aggressor in New York City.
Parton explained that she and her then-assistant Judy Ogle went to New York City in the late 1960s or early 1970s and got a room. Neither had been to NYC before, so they left their bags in their room and then went out to see the city. They returned to their room to find that the people running the hotel thought she and Ogle “were turning tricks” and kicked them out.
She told O’Brien, “We asked if we could please, at least, leave our stuff in the lobby. So we were out waiting around until time to leave, and we were walking down the street. We didn’t know where to go.”
Parton said they wound up on 42nd Street by accident and she said, “This guy thought that [she and Ogle] were on the make.”
She said, “At that time, I was a country girl from the mountains; I had a gun in my purse.”
O’Brien interjected, “So you had a gun in your purse?”
Parton answered, “I had a gun in my purse, and this guy wouldn’t leave me alone cause he was just sure I was playing hard to get [and] that I was really after it.”
She explained, “I didn’t know how to get him off me so I just pulled my gun out and I said, ‘If you touch me one more time I’m gonna shoot you.’”
On August 11, 2021, NRA Women published a list of nine celebrity #GunGirls, and Parton was on the list. They quoted her reflecting on the NYC aggressor, saying, “I was terrified, and I was mad too.”
NRA Women added, “… [Parton] certainly doesn’t intend on ever feeling that way again; the 11-time Grammy award winner has never gone anywhere without her .38 since.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.