Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Guns and Women and Men

Guns are bad news for women even in cases like this.

5 comments:

  1. Well noted that you don't care when a woman defends her life with a firearm.

    A shot-dead woman puts a Smile on Mike's monstrous face!

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  2. Mikeb says:

    Guns are bad news for women even in cases like this.

    Assuming that she was the shooter, and that it wasn't justifiable self-defense (and yes, I realize that both those assumptions are almost certainly correct, but I like to be consistent in applying presumption of innocence), the gun wasn't her bad news, her temper and lack of self-control were.

    People have free will, Mikeb, despite your best efforts to empower the government to change that. She (apparently) pulled the trigger--her own bad choice.

    To say that "Guns are bad news for women, because women might get angry and terrorize, wound, or murder one or more people," is to pretend that women are too weak to not shoot someone, given the opportunity.

    I submit that there are very, very few such women (or men, for that matter).

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  3. Guns are bad news for criminals like MikeB.

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  4. By the way, Mikeb, I know how fond you are of spouting your "guns are bad news for women" mantra, but I've never really quite understood it. Men die of gunshot wounds at a rate of what--6 or so times the firearms death rate for women (WISQARS puts the ratio at about 6.25 to 1, over an 8 year stretch, 1999-2007)?

    Now, you're claiming that "guns are bad news for women" even when no woman is shot--the gun was "bad news" for her because she used it. Again, though, men shoot people far more often than women (and the ratio will be far higher than 6.25 to 1, I'll wager)--I trust you won't argue with that?

    So just how, then, are guns "worse" news for women than they are for men (or for intersex people, for that matter)?

    I realize, of course, that I just set myself up for a bit of a trap--now you can pounce and say "Gotcha! You're right--guns are bad news for everybody--thanks for helping to prove it!"

    Being one of the scores of millions of Americans who knows what bullshit that is, though, I'm not particularly worried about it. What I am interested in exploring, though, is why the obsession with guns and women, when you could make a stronger (albeit still contemptibly weak) case for the argument that they're "bad" for men.

    Actually, I have a theory about that--let's see what you think. I surmise that you want to be seen as the protector of women, minorities, the poor, and non-Christians of various denominations (or of no denomination), etc. It sorta works for you, I guess, because gun ownership is more prevalent among those nasty white, Christian men. I believe that you think you make your anti-gun case stronger, by making heterosexual Christian white men the "enemy," who you would like to present as using guns to oppress everyone else.

    Am I warm?

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  5. Well, you're a little warm.

    Especially that second to last paragraph.

    It might help to refer to the original post in which I coined the now-tedious expression. It was about male domestic abusers killing their female partners. Later it took on a semi-sarcastic and ironic twist, which you've picked up on.

    In those cases where a woman does not allow male abuse, and becomes the abuser herself, the availability of a gun played its sinister part.

    Guns are bad news (for everyone as you so clearly stated).

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