Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My analysis interspersed in bold.
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The latest weapon in the war against reasonable restrictions on access to guns (The Left always deals with this as if there are no restrictions at present, like the issue is brand new and their outrage is because nothing is being done.) 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 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. (How does this refute the argument presented? We are not comparing the number of female gun victims to the number of females who defend themselves with guns. There is no useful metric to be derived from such a comparison. We would need to know how many of those female victims used a gun in their defense, wouldn't we?)
Second, the restrictions under discussion would not harm women. They would either make women safer or, at the very least, not impede their ability to use guns in self-defense. (Um, this is the subject of the argument. She asserts the "factual" nature of her side of the argument as proof her side of the argument is true! This is a tautology.)
On the threat that guns pose to women, consider: Women are far less likely to be the victims of gun violence than men. (Either Ms. Marcus is having difficulty with connecting logical streams of thought together, or she is engaging in obfuscation. Two paragraphs ago she argued that "woman are far more likely to be victims of gun violence than to benefit from using a gun..." Now she's arguing that women are far less likely to be victims of gun violence..." So either guns are more dangerous for women or they are not.) But they are far more likely than men to be killed by someone they know, generally a spouse or partner.
Women with a gun in the home were nearly three times as likely to be the victim of homicide than women living in a home without firearms, according to a 2003 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. (This does not speak at all to a woman possessing a firearm for self defense. We need to know who the guns belong to, who shot the woman and why, were they shot in the home, and did they use a gun to defend themselves.)
“There’s good evidence that a gun in the home increases the likelihood that a woman in the home will die,” said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. “There is no evidence that a gun in the home is protective for the woman.” (Again, this does not speak at all to women possessing a firearm for self defense.)
So much for guns making women safer. (Ms. Marcus constructs a straw man and tears it down. But none of it speaks to a woman arming herself for self defense!)
Still, the Second Amendment grants women as well as men the freedom to take the risk of having one at home. (The Second Amendment grants no one any rights. It affirms the right to keep and bear arms. The Constitution is a document that creates and limits government. It does not speak to the people except to establish those governmental limits.)
Then on to the second issue: whether various gun control proposals — enhanced background checks, limits on magazine sizes, restrictions on assault weapons — would make it more difficult for women to defend themselves.
Trotter’s Exhibit A was Sarah McKinley, an Oklahoma widow alone with her 3-month-old son when two intruders, one armed with a foot-long knife, broke into her home. McKinley shot and killed one of them with a Remington 12-gauge shotgun.
But here’s the problem with Trotter’s example: Nothing in the restrictions under discussion would have stopped McKinley. (Ms. Marcus spent the first half of her editorial attempting to establish that guns do not make women safer. Now when she discusses an instance where a gun did make a women safer, she changes subjects to what the gun restriction proposals are. That is not the issue. Women defending themselves with guns is the issue.)
As Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse observed, “I think it proves the point that with ordinary firearms, not hundred-magazine peculiar types of artifacts, people are quite capable of defending themselves.” (This is not a matter of dispute. Of course people can and do defend themselves with every kind of firearm. Ms. Marcus has yet to offer any argument at all that women should not defend themselves with guns, regardless of the capacity of gun magazines.)
Trotter remained impervious to Whitehouse’s logic. “How can you say that?” she asked. “You are a large man. ... You cannot understand. You are not a woman stuck in her house having to defend her children, not able to leave her child, not able to go seek safety.”
Trotter argued that assault weapons like the AR-15 are young women’s “weapon of choice” because they are accurate, light and, most of all, intimidating. “The peace of mind that a woman has as she’s facing three, four, five violent attackers ... knowing that she has a scary-looking gun,” she said, “gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened violent criminals.”
You have got to be kidding. The intruder is going to be more scared off — the woman is going to feel more empowered — because the gun is scarier-looking? (Ms. Trotter did not say that the intruder is going to scared. She said "...a scary-looking gun gives HER more courage..." And even if Ms. Trotter was saying the intruder would be more scared, how would this be a bad thing? Either he's more scared than when a conventional gun is pointed at him, or he is similarly scared. Either situation is more favorable to the armed woman.)
If anything, women should be clamoring for gun control measures — in particular, for expanded background checks. Individuals convicted of domestic violence are prohibited from buying guns — but, of course, the porousness of the current background check system lets abusers dodge that rule. (In other words, because government has failed, we need more government.)
And, according to the National Institute of Justice, abused women are six times more likely to be killed when a gun is in the home. (Killed by whom? Killed by what? Killed at home? These kinds of questions are products of a kind of curiosity that Ms. Marcus does not seem to possess.)
“I speak on behalf of millions of American women across the country who urge you to defend our Second Amendment right to choose to defend ourselves,” Trotter proclaimed.
I’d say that I speak for millions of American women who reject this phony solicitude, but there is a better representative. She spoke at the hearing, too. “Too many children are dying,” she said, painfully enunciating each syllable. “We must do something.”
Her name is Gabby Giffords. Anyone dare tell her that guns make women safer? (False equivalency. Ms. Marcus is attempting to use a specific to argue for the general. We do not make policy or law from a single example.
The fact that women die from guns does not speak to the issue of women being armed. Did Ms. Giffords have a gun at the time? Did anyone in the vicinity attempt to defend her with a firearm? Of course not. But this is the kind of "logic" that passes for rational thought among the Left.)
Ruth Marcus is a columnist for the Washington Post.
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