Maybe there really is a war on women. Recently, Anti-gun activist Leah Gunn Barrett, the executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said that women shouldn’t be allowed to carry firearms for protection on college campuses, on the grounds that “Women are not physically powerful like men are. A gun could easily be turned on the woman, and it is frequently.”
So what is she saying? That women need a man to protect them? They are unable to protect themselves because they are weaker? They can’t be trained to properly handle firearms? For one, I know plenty of women that could kick my ass in a fair fight. And two, I’ve seen plenty of women qualify with the M9 9mm Beretta on the same range I qualified on. Three, isn’t that the reason for a woman to have a gun, to level the playing field against a bigger, stronger male opponent?
In contrast to Barrett’s statement, information from the National Crime Victimization Survey found that only 1% of DGU’s (Defensive Gun Uses) resulted in the offender taking a gun away from the victim. This does not necessarily mean the attacker used the gun against the victim; just that the attacker ended up with the gun. The report also found that rape victims using armed resistance were less likely to have the rape completed against them than victims using any other mode of resistance.
So if females can’t or shouldn’t try to use firearms for protection, why is female gun ownership up 77% since 2005? Is it because they want to be able to defend themselves and their families? They know the police will never arrive in time to stop a home invasion? Or they don’t want to depend on someone else (like a man) for their safety? These all seem to be common sense answers. Or maybe they all just took up hunting!
Of course there’s always the alternative (Liberal) explanation for the huge rise in gun sales to females: They are making straw purchases for their convicted felon or drug addict husbands and boyfriends. I actually read this in a study by a left leaning doctor who was trying to explain away the increase.
I guess that could explain the increase in gun sales to females. But it doesn’t explain the 246% increase in females obtaining concealed carry permits. Maybe women are standing up and acquiring the means to protect themselves.
The number of women killed in domestic disputes is often cited as a reason to restrict gun ownership. But what they fail to mention is the number of men killed with guns in domestic disputes by women.
Read these excerpts from GUN CONTROL: A REALISTIC ASSESSMENT By Don B. Kates Jr. Gun Control: A Realistic Assessment An excellent but lengthy article.
“When we look at criminal violence between spouses we find that 91% were victimizations of women by their husbands or ex-husbands. “
“In inter-spousal homicides in which the husband kills the wife, most are classified as murders. But in the overwhelming majority of cases where the wife kills the husband, she is defending herself or the children and classified as justifiable homicide.”
“In the majority of cases where a woman kills a man, it requires a weapon, most often a handgun. Eliminating handguns from American life would not decrease the total number of killings between spouses. Eliminating handguns would only change the sex of the victim by assuring that in virtually every case it would be the abused wife, not the murderous husband. After all, a gun is of far more use to the victim than her attacker. Husbands, due to size and strength advantages, do not need weapons to kill.”
“Having a gun is not necessary to attack a victim who is unarmed, alone, small, and frail. But even in the hands of a weak and unskilled victim, a gun can be used without much risk of effective counterattack. Of course it is tragic when an abused woman has to kill a current or former mate. Such killings cannot be counted as if they were the costs of handgun ownership. From the woman’s point of view, she benefits from gun ownership by being able to save her life and possibly her children’s lives. Thus it is misleading for critics of handgun ownership to misrepresent such lawful defensive killings as domestic murder.”
“A final tangential, but significant, point emerges from the statistics on use of guns in domestic self-defense. Those statistics strongly support the defensive efficacy of firearms. As noted above, men who batter their wives average 45 pounds heavier and 4 to 5 inches taller than their victim. If guns were not effective for defense, a homicidal attack by a husband upon his wife would almost invariably end in the death of the wife rather than in his death 50% of the time.”
So what is the real purpose of limiting a woman’s access to firearms for personal defense? Is there a movement to keep women defenseless or dependent?
In 2008, Amanda Collins was a student at University of Nevada-Reno. She has a concealed carry license, but following University policy, did not carry her weapon on campus. She was raped in a parking garage 100 feet away from the campus police office. Her attacker did not follow University policy and was armed with a handgun. He went on to rape two more women, killing one before he was caught. In her testimony before a Colorado congressional committee about firearms on campus, she concluded her statement with, “How does rendering me defenseless protect you against a violent crime?”
How does it?
