Myth #4a - "Women shouldn't have guns because men will only take them away to use against them."

Myth #4a - "Women shouldn't have guns because men will only take them away to use against them."

Another variation of the "your attacker will just take it away" scenario is sometimes used by those in favor of victim disarmament when the subject is women and guns. "The man will just take the gun away from you" is a very interesting statement which cries out to be deconstructed. All too often, this statement goes entirely unchallenged, not merely on factual grounds, but at a deeper philosophical level. Repeated requests for civilian examples of this phenomenon have gone unanswered.

All acknowledge that a firearm is a dangerous implement capable of inflicting serious injury or death. That being the case, it would seem a simple matter for the woman in question to merely shoot the assailant attempting to disarm her. And in this scenario, the male assailant is assisting the female defender by presenting her with a larger, closer target, difficult even for an inexperienced shooter to miss. If the weapon in question is a handgun, wresting control of it is much more difficult than it would be for the attacker to grasp a longer-barreled weapon, such as a shotgun or rifle. The simplest of logic dictates that dead men don't snatch guns away, and that relatively smart men who don't want to become dead men, shouldn't try.

Given the odds against the male in purely physical terms, we must look for another reason why "gun control" advocates might claim that the attacker can so easily disarm a woman. The only obvious explanation would be that the woman voluntarily gives the gun away. The entire foundation of the victim disarmer's argument is that when faced with a violent male attacker, a woman armed with a lethal weapon, instead of using that weapon to defend life and limb, will instead give that weapon to the man intent upon robbing, raping or murdering her.

This "explanation" has numerous implications, which are quite understandably not commented upon by "gun control" advocates when they advance this scenario. If indeed women have an uncontrollable urge to arm those who would harm them, does this not call into question the very concept of armed policewomen? After all, what point is there in training, uniforming and arming women at great public expense, when all they'll do is just give away their weapons to any criminal who confronts them?

And what of women in the armed forces? Why give a woman a Beretta or an M16A2 when she'll just go looking for an Iraqi soldier to hand it to? Certainly, if the victim disarmers' argument is to be accepted, no women should be allowed to serve in Artillery or Air Defense units, since the enemy will quickly amass a stockpile of 8" guns and Patriot missiles, willingly turned over to them by female soldiers.

Can the nation really afford the risk that female pilots will go off in search of enemy airfields at which they might land their multi-million dollar fighter planes? If some in the "gun control" movement are to be believed, we might just as well ship F14s directly to Libya rather than allow women to fly them unbidden to Quadaffi's airfields. Only a few defections of female captains of aircraft carriers would be sufficient to completely neutralize the United States Navy. Dare we take the risk?

What madman would think to put nuclear weapons into a woman's hands if indeed women are one tenth as easily cowed as the "gun control" lobby makes them out to be? It would be sheer national suicide to elect a female President when only a raised eyebrow or harsh word on the part of a Rafsanjani or Karadzic would reduce her to abject surrender...

Of course it could be that women aren't the sniveling cowards that the victim disarmers make them out to be. Perhaps rather than the immobilized victims of a thousand slasher films, women are rather more like Buddhist nun Ng Mui, the philosphical antecedent of Bruce Lee. Perhaps rather than burst into tears, they're more likely to serve a cannon like the women who fought in the Revolutionary War. Perhaps rather than arm their assailants, they'll take a more proactive approach like the soldaderas of the Mexican revolution, or Soviet combat pilots like Lilya Litvak and the "Night Witches". Perhaps like Israeli women soldiers and female PLO guerrillas, they're quite capable of taking care of themselves.

The simple truth is that the "He'll just take her gun away" scenario is wallowing in all of the worst condescending stereotypes inflicted on women. It proudly proclaims that women are weak, cowardly, and_want_to be attacked. If there's any good reason for "gun control," misogyny isn't it.

Recommended Reading:

"Arms and the Woman: A Feminist Reappraisal", Stange, Mary Zeiss in Guns: Who Should Have Them?, David Kopel, ed.
Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-958-5 (1995), a book which is an excellent introduction to the political issues surrounding gun ownership.