Women need guns? Yeah, like a hole in the head
The phony pro-gun argument
By Ruth Marcus, WashPost, Published: January 31
The latest weapon in the war against reasonable restrictions on access to guns is the straw woman.
Don’t fall for her.
This formulation would have you believe gun rights are women’s rights and that limits on guns would harm women disproportionately. The insinuation is that only insensitive men, who can’t possibly identify with the vulnerable position in which women find themselves, would be foisting gun control on them.
“Guns make women safer,” Gayle Trotter of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, told the Senate Judiciary Committee at its Wednesday hearing on gun violence. “For women, the ability to arm ourselves for our protection is even more consequential than for men. Because guns are the great equalizer in a violent confrontation. As a result, we protect women by safeguarding our Second Amendment rights. Every woman deserves a fighting chance.”
This argument would be powerful, if only it were true. The facts suggest precisely the opposite.
First, women are far more likely to be the victims of gun violence than to benefit from using a gun in self-defense.
(More here.)
The latest weapon in the war against reasonable restrictions on access to guns is the straw woman.
Don’t fall for her.
This formulation would have you believe gun rights are women’s rights and that limits on guns would harm women disproportionately. The insinuation is that only insensitive men, who can’t possibly identify with the vulnerable position in which women find themselves, would be foisting gun control on them.
“Guns make women safer,” Gayle Trotter of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, told the Senate Judiciary Committee at its Wednesday hearing on gun violence. “For women, the ability to arm ourselves for our protection is even more consequential than for men. Because guns are the great equalizer in a violent confrontation. As a result, we protect women by safeguarding our Second Amendment rights. Every woman deserves a fighting chance.”
This argument would be powerful, if only it were true. The facts suggest precisely the opposite.
First, women are far more likely to be the victims of gun violence than to benefit from using a gun in self-defense.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Last week, in developing a blog posting on the Republican silent shift to accepting women in combat roles (versus how they still oppose gays in the military), I read a number of postings that were written before Secretary Panetta announced the change. One was written by Gayle Trotter ... Yet there are real reasons to avoid putting women in combat. Many young single women are specifically recruited to serve in our military. Some are also mothers, or they become pregnant when they are deployed. When you mix young women with fit young men, pregnancies are to be expected.
So, I was surprised to see her on the panel ... now advocating that women need to have assault weapons in their homes ... but did not want women to use them on the battlefield.
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