Some anti-gun types have expressed the belief that recreational shooting will eventually “whither on the vine” as established shooters get older. “They’ll just die off, and then we can ban their old guns” the logic goes. Younger shooters seem to have different thoughts on the matter…
Over at Girls Just Wanna Have Guns, Edwin Leap has a laugh at the expense of the inconsistent anti-gun left. They bristle at the assertion that there are some things that men can do that women cannot; unless that something is to resist the wiles of gun industry marketeers.
This is fascinating to me. This is 2013. The equality of women is not an issue for discussion. Women serve in high public office, women fly high performance combat aircraft and command Naval vessels. Soon, it appears they will serve alongside men in ground combat. Women own and run huge industries. Women are movers and shakers, cultural icons and scientific innovators. Women teach in universities, give us our news, analyze our politics and raise our children. Women ride motorcycles and buy sports cars. They are athletes, construction workers, truck-drivers and welders. Women pursue and arrest criminals as law-enforcement officers. Women are capable of doing whatever they want.
So, in light of this, is the political and cultural left really worried that the big, bad, paternalistic, old gun industry has tricked the fairer sex into buying and owning guns? It’s such a silly assertion that I find myself at a loss of words.
The anti-gun left would have us believe that merely applying a pink finish to a gun, or slapping Hello Kitty onto it, makes that gun irresistible to women. To them, there’s no other “logical” explanation as to why a woman would want a gun. It must be trickery!
The author points out that, far from falling for advertising hype, women understand biology and math. They also understand the use of tools. An inescapable fact of biology is that the average man is bigger and stronger than the average woman. This is called sexual dimorphism; the fact that male Homo Sapiens look different than do female Homo Sapiens. Men are also more prone to violence than are women. This isn’t always a bad thing. Who would want our country protected by non-violent Marines? But it is a problem when a woman finds herself, or her child, as the object of a man’s violent urges. Since we can think of the physical differences between men and women as mathematical ratios, what a woman needs in such a situation is something that adds to her side of the equation. And a gun is a tool that does just that. A gun “makes the mathematics of violence work in their favor.”
Contrary to what the anti-gun left would have us believe, women understand this. They aren’t responding to clever marketing when they buy guns; they are responding to a biological imperative. A woman who wants to protect herself and her offspring needs a tool that allows her to do so against a larger, stronger attacker. She may ultimately choose the pink gun over the same model with a blued finish, but what really makes her choose that gun over any other is its ability to aid her in defending herself and her children from a man bent upon violence. It’s the gun that’s underneath the pink finish that she’s really buying.
But to an anti-gun leftist, this is simply unthinkable. Women are supposed to know that they are to wait for the police to show up; not “take matters into their own hands.” In other words, wait for a man to show up to save her. In any other area of life, this would be recognized as a thoroughly sexist attitude. But not, for the left, when it comes to guns. When is comes to guns, they tell us, women are “naturally” predisposed to shy away from them. Any desire to actually buy one must be because they fell for some man’s advertizing campaign.
What a pity that the left considers women so pathetically simple and weak. And what delicious irony that a libertarian and conservative movement like gun-ownership should make the ‘pro-woman’ left look so utterly silly.
Tracy Scarpulla is a nurse living with her family in Albany, New York. She grew up in a home where there were no guns. No one she knew growing up had guns. That changed when she married a U.S. Marine. She writes in a column published at CNN.com:
I married a U.S. Marine. He of course was a firm believer in his right to bear arms. This posed no issue until our son was born. I was adamant that no gun be allowed in our home, while he felt quite the opposite. We agreed on one gun locked in a safe, and his other hunting guns were stored at his parents.’
Slowly over the years, I became more and more fearful of being home alone on the nights he worked, especially after I had children. We were living in Maryland on a farm in the middle of nowhere. One night, I got a call from my husband telling me to lock all doors and windows as he had just spoken with a sheriff down the road who was looking for an escaped convict.
I was terrified.
We had that one gun, but I had no idea how to use it. That changed very quickly over the following weeks, as we went out for target practice. I learned how to shoot and for the first time in years, I slept well. I finally felt safe at night.
And now President Obama and NY Governor Cuomo want her, and millions of other women, to feel terrified once again.
Tracy and her family shared their story with NRA News’ Ginny Simone…
Tracy and her family plan to flee New York for Free America.
A gun is not a “boy’s toy”. They’re not sporting goods. (Do you really think that the Founders would have risked their lives to protect the right to keep and bear toys?!) A gun is something that a woman has a right to; just as much as she has the right to participate in how we are governed, to decide where she works, where she lives, or to worship God as she chooses. She has as much right as any man to own the firearm of her choice.
From National Review Online…
Sorry, President Obama. As young women, we prefer an AR-15 “assault” rifle with a 30-round magazine for self-defense.
In fact, we wouldn’t want to be stuck at home without one. In the wake of mass murders like Sandy Hook and the horrific rapes and murders of thousands of women each year, pepper spray, mace, or five-round handheld pistols aren’t going to cut it.
So what’s a girl to do? When choosing our tool for home defense, we want the best — in accuracy, handling, and aesthetics. The best choice by all three criteria is — hands down — the AR-15.
Let’s face it: She may always be Daddy’s little girl, but Daddy can’t always be around. So as a daddy, I want my little girl to have access to whatever self-defense tools she feels she needs. I certainly don’t want some metrosexual bureaucrat on a Senator’s office staff deciding that for her. Whether she’s defending herself from a common street thug or a thug on the government’s payroll, I want her to have the finest weapons technology that money can buy. Any politically correct restrictions that threaten her safety are simply unacceptable.
