I’m Nobody’s Victim
The above linked article really pushed a lot of
buttons for me. In fact it infuriated me so brace yourselves.
"...
first, the idea that carrying guns makes your surroundings safer ..."
I don't think many
people believe guns make your surroundings safer anymore than more cops on
the street make a neighborhood safer. Both carrying a gun and police presence
come into play after the fact: when a woman is attacked, if she carries a gun,
she can shoot the mother fucker and, depending on the situation, keep him from
raping and killing her or keep him from doing it again. Cops cannot and do
not prevent crime, they merely clean up the mess. If a cop is around, most
criminals including rapists won't commit their crime THEN. He/she/they will
wait until the cops leave or go somewhere else to commit their crimes.
"...
second, the idea that the onus is on rape victims—rather than their rapists—to
prevent their rapes."
You know I get
pissed as hell whenever someone says something like this. As if a victim or
potential victim is absolved of all personal responsibility for their safety.
As I said, the police cannot prevent a crime because Knuckle-dragger #42 isn't
going to attack anyone while their around but, aside from hiring a 24/7
personal bodyguard, every female will be at risk sometime. I'm not apologizing
for the sick freaks who prey on women or children nor am I blaming the victim
but, dammit, a little foresight goes a long way to keep anyone safER. Not safe,
because no one is safe all the time - or any time in my estimation. Nothing
will prevent a would-be rapist from attacking someone somewhere.
The idea that a
woman is not or cannot be responsible for her own safety is the rankest form of
paternalism to come down the pike. This mentality keeps a woman from
feeling or becoming able to care for herself without someone - usually a male -
to "take care of her". It keeps women weak and needy and under the
thumb of someone else - again, usually a male. But what happens if that male is
not around when #42 spots a possible victim. She sure as hell can't take care
of herself, prevent or minimize the damage inflicted by #42 or one of his
spiritual brothers. Anyone who doesn't teach their children, male or female,
how to take care of themselves, how to recognize a potentially dangerous
situation, how to extricate themselves from that situation with the minimum of
damage to themselves is a neglectful parent and an accessory before the fact.
Furthermore, if a
woman doesn't take steps to prevent her own victimization nobody will. I am
absolutely certain that, if the onus to prevent rapes is on the rapist, no
rapist is going to prevent their raping someone. To suggest such a thing is
patently absurd.
"Gun use can obviously be responsible in the individual instance,
but in the aggregate, it's not ..."
First of
all, I don't care about the aggregate, I care about one individual walking
alone in the dark on campus. If I or someone I care about is carrying a gun, I
know that I or they are properly trained in it's use. If faced with a situation
in which I or those I love cannot avoid or get away from then I want to be
absolutely sure we have the maximum chance of survival.
Second,
when they are talking about "the aggregate" what are the parameters
of the study? Are we talking about an 18 year old who has never been away from
home, a 26 year old single mom who's never fired a weapon, a 46 year old who
has been educated and educated herself in self-defense up to and including
firing a gun or a 52 year old veteran with hand-to-hand combat and weapons
training? Does their aggregate include prior victims of assault, domestic
assault or sexual assault? An aggregate is as useful or useless as the
parameters used to develop it.
"... having firearms within reach makes men four times more likely
to commit suicide than in situations when the guns are not accessible ..."
In this
case, I don't care about possible suicides and including it in this discussion
does nothing more than cloud the issue under discussion which is the safety of
WOMEN. Also, anyone truly bent on suicide will find a way to kill themselves.
" ... and it makes women three times more likely to become homicide
victims."
As for
women being more likely to be homicide victims; says who? PERHAPS this is
true but, again, what woman are we talking about and who owns the gun? Are we
talking about one of the ladies I mentioned above? Is she at home, in her car,
walking down the street or on her way to the campus library? Is it her gun? Has
she been trained to use it? Who is the her killer? IS this a domestic violence
situation? Because if it is the dynamic changes drastically.
Show me
the research instrument and methodology before you make such sweeping
statements. Is the statement based upon a survey instrument? If so how was it
administered? What population data is it based on; urban, suburban or rural?
How big is your sample? Does it include college students in the sample? What's
your error rate?
In reality
none of that matters because I don't care about "women" in general or
as an aggregate. I care about exactly one at a time. It might be me or my
roomie or one of her daughters or her granddaughter and I guaran-damn-tee that
all of the above are not shrinking violets. We might still be raped but it's
not going to easy and the rapist is not going to get away without some damage.
The mere possibility that we will be murdered because we have a weapon has
nothing to do with the probability that we will be raped.
"...
that college campuses are already unstable in a regulatory sense—and
consequently, that the introduction of guns into an environment marked by
drugs, drinking, and other forms of constant, experimental (if often mild)
illegality would be a literal death sentence to many people involved."
If it's that fucking
"unstable" then that's a whole other issue. If a campus is that
unstable - which is hard to tell since most university boards of directors and
administrators would rather be skinned alive than admit they have a
violence and/or sexual assault problem let alone publish actual numbers of
assaults or attempted assaults. That very instability is why these women need
to be educated in protecting themselves and being able to carry a gun is an
OPTION they should have.
"Since
empirical data suggest that most victims of homicide know their assailants, the
higher risk for women strongly indicates domestic violence."
Says who? Show me
the numbers on THAT and you'd better be able to back them up with hard
data. Again, this may be true but the author, Jia Tolentino, herself
admits that it's merely an extrapolation of data that was not gathered and
evaluated for that subject. The data originated from a study about rape on
college campuses not domestic violence. The proper research instrument could
be, should be and would be VERY different.
"So: guns make domestic violence more deadly for women."
Depends on
who's holding that gun and whether she knows how to use it.
"Rape on college campuses (as well as in general) happens in
situations that mirror very closely the dynamic of domestic violence—the
introduction of coercion and sexual assault under the cover of relationships
and interactions that seem outwardly acceptable. And yet the weird abstraction
of rape, the displacement of it from within the community—the idea that sexual
violence is committed by people jumping out of bushes, instead of three-quarters of it being committed by
people the victims know—"
So it's
only date rape that occurs on college campuses? And "in general" rape
off campuses are also date rape? Better pony up with some hard, verifiable
facts on that before I will even consider that to be a valid statement. And, IF
rape is an acquaintance-based crime, how distant does the relationship have to
be for a rape to NOT "mirror very closely the dynamic of domestic
violence"? What is it when someone "jumps out of the bushes"?
"Three-quarters of it"? Really? Prove it. And even if you can, again,
how close or distant does the relationship - the degree of "knowing"
- have to be to fall into either category?
"...
this rhetoric invokes the safety of potential rape victims as a reason to allow
guns on campus, which is a situation—due to the power differential that
underlies sexual assault—that would dramatically decrease whatever safety these
potential rape victims have."
I absolutely
disagree with this. The power differential is at least situational and
at most nonexistent when a properly trained, armed woman is the potential
victim. A rape victim, potential or otherwise, has no safety thus it cannot be
decreased. Ask a rape survivor and find out if SHE thought she was safer not
having a gun.
"The
sponsor... Michele Fiore, said in a
telephone interview: "If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm,
I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are
occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their
head."
This is absolutely
true. A dead rapist will rape no more; therefore the number of subsequent
assaults would automatically drop every time one of these brutal bastards bites
it.
"As for how many of "these young, hot little girls" would
agree, the answer is 14 percent. According to the Times, 86 percent
of women and 67 percent of men are in opposition to gun carry on campus, as are
a "vast majority" of college administrators
and faculty."
That's fine but what
about that 14 percent? Why shouldn't they at least have the OPTION of trying to
protect themselves? And, personally, I don't really think men deserve a vote on
this subject, unless one considers them to viable targets for sexual assault.
That's possible but, again, that's another story. Neither do administrators and
faculty get a vote other than as potential victims. Their position in the
college hierarchy doesn't make them disinterested parties. If they're honest
they should admit that at least part of the reason for their opposition to
carry permits on campus is to lessen the college's potential liability in a
lawsuit.
"Those
in favor, I'll venture to say, are either getting paid or deluding themselves: longitudinal studies have shown that a 1
percent increase in gun ownership leads to "a 1.1 percent increase in
the firearm homicide rate and a 0.7 percent increase in the total homicide
rate."
Who, pray tell, is
paying them? Self-delusion is in the eye of the beholder. Which longitudinal
studies? Who did them? When? Why? Who PAID for them? Again, show me the
research models. If an increase in gun ownership causes a 1.1 percent increase
in the firearm homicide rate - and I'm saying IF because I haven't seen the
numbers - then should not the increase in the total homicide rate
also be 1.1 percent?
Also,
"homicide" is the act of a human being killing another
human being. Lots of things including death through military action, lawful
execution and getting shot by accident are considered homicide. The real
question lies in the MANNER of death; was the homicide murder,
accidental or self-defense? In other words, was it a justifiable homicide? So,
yes, if a victim is armed and kills her attacker in self-defense it is indeed
classed as a homicide. However, it is a justifiable homicide in self-defense.
The cause of death is homicide, the manner of death is self-defense. Such a
situation would indeed cause the homicide rate to increase but NOT the
murder rate.
"It's
sickening to imagine what guns on campus would do in terms of rape."
Not to me. What is
"sickening" to me is that someone else gets a vote on how I defend
myself. Personally, I'm all for increasing the homicide rate among rapists.
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