Guns and the "Alternative Media," Part I

Say Uncle linked today to a piece at TheAlternatePress.com, Women and Guns by one Kristen Houghton, a self-described hoplophobe:

I am afraid of guns; they scare me to death. Even in movies or on TV, the sight and sound of the gun being fired makes me tense up.

Not an auspicious place to start.

She's also self-admittedly, not too tightly tethered to reality:

Regardless of the statement put out by gun owners that "Guns don't kill people, people do", I still feel that if criminals were unable to get their hands on guns no one would get killed.

(My emphasis.) As if guns are the only way people get killed criminally. About a third of homicide victims here would object to that, if they could. And in what world could criminals not get guns? Hell, our own government has been supplying them to drug cartels in Mexico!

But she is paying some attention:

To me, guns equal damage or death but I may be one of the few women who feels that way. More women than ever are buying handguns. Sales have increased steadily, nearly doubling in the last decade. Almost five million more women now own guns than was the case less than ten years ago.

Tell that to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. They think it's propaganda.

While a whistle, a can of mace, or even a Taser are all items that are recommended by mainstream media as ways for women to protect themselves, they don't always work. Nor does acting passively when confronted by a rapist. If your attacker is bigger, stronger and playing on your fear, none of these are going to be of much help. Guns eliminate the strength difference between the attacker and the potential victim. This makes it much harder for the strong to prey upon the weak.

Perhaps she's not so disconnected from reality after all.

It doesn't take much common sense to figure out that nothing makes a criminal run away faster than seeing a determined woman holding a loaded gun pointing right at him.

She's beginning to sound like one of us.

I may not like it but society has very likely made women and guns a necessity. Even I see the reasoning behind knowing how to protect yourself with a firearm.

Here I'm going to object a bit. I've pointed this out before, but overall, violent crime is at historic lows in this country. It began declining in 1992 and has kept declining even through last year. Society hasn't "made women and guns a necessity," women have finally begun to recognize that individuals are responsible for their own safety, and this is a good thing. She needs to get together with AGirlandHerGun and compare notes.

She says she's going to take a self-protection class and learn to shoot.  I hope she does, but without a paradigm shift like AGirlandHerGun has gone through, I don't think it will help her.  She's going in with too much fear and too many prejudices.  I'd also suggest some correspondence with Abigale Kohn and Emily Yoffe.