Guns as a feminist issue

[catsittingstill]

Over at Feministe, they are saying that guns are not a feminist issue, in response to Megan McArdle saying on her blog that they are.

(McArdle redux: easy availibility of guns is good for women because you can fire a gun (and thus fight off a male attacker) without being strong.)

(Feministing redux: when you get right down to it, it doesn't *matter* that you can fire a gun without being strong; women in practice are more likely to be killed by guns than to defend themseves with one.)

What do I think?  First I think there's a tendency to revere, or revile, guns as guns--for a lot of people they're not just tools; they're symbols and the symbol gets in the way of evaluating the tool.

So I'm going to try to think about a tool to throw lumps of metal very fast.  Theoretically I could indeed use such a tool to fight off a bigger, stronger attacker, just as I could use a crowbar or a chisel or a plugged-in circle saw.  However:

1) Such tools tend to interest men more than women, in my experience (whether because of their symbolism, or because most tools to work metal get more use by men I don't know).  Easy availability of such a tool is more likely, I think, to promote its possession by men than women--just like easy availability of a circle saw is more likely to promote its possession by men than by women.  (Note that of course I agree that women use tools and of course I support a woman's right to use any tool that a man may use.  Just in case anyone was getting confused.)

1a) Such tools don't interest me, given the responsibility of making sure no bystander is hurt by them (I don't carry around plugged in circle saws everywhere I go either, for pretty much the same reason--in any given day I won't have a use for one, and subjecting myself and others to that hazard unnecessarily is stupid).  Like a seatbelt, this tool only works for self defense if you have it when you need it--I wouldn't tend to have it, and I suspect I am not alone or even in the minority among women in this.

2) You'd be amazed how many tools I am not strong enough to use without a mechanical assist.  Some among these have been examples of metal-throwing tools I was not strong enough to cock on demand.  I am by no means convinced that these tools are the promised equalizers that will make it possible for smaller weaker less aggressive people to fight off bigger stronger more aggressive people.

3) my life experience has been that where these metal throwing tools are highly valued and frequently possessed, women tend to be treated less equally.  Sometimes *markedly* less equally.  Make of it what you will.

4) the crucial element in all this is the willingness to seriously hurt or kill somebody.  My limited experience suggests to me that I'm not good at this (I'm fine with it in self-defense, in theory, but in practice I would hesitate).  I think that a lot of people aren't good at this--and furthermore I think women are in general less likely to be good at it than men.  The metal throwing tool does no good without the willingess.  The willingness takes actual training and/or experience.

So, no, I don't think guns are the solution for women getting equality or even for women fighting off attackers.  Some women will choose to carry them and that's fine with me.  But feminist issue?  Unless someone is trying to ban only women from owning guns, no, it's not.  Feministe wins.

Comments

Ignoring deterrence

[(Anonymous)]

I think that we may be ignoring the deterrence side of the argument here. Yes, in the final analysis you need to be willing to pull the trigger against a determined attacker, but how many attackers are that determined?

The average mugger or burglar will probably deterred by your brandishing a weapon. They are after money and valuables and see crime as an easy way to obtain them. They are generally unwilling to risk their own lives to obtain them and once they see the intended victim with a firearm, that is what they are doing. After all, you may know that you would be extremely hesitant to pull the trigger and have trouble hitting the broad side of a barn. The criminal doesn't know that.

What we really need are better statistics in this area. Unfortunately, controlled experiments are difficult, and I expect most of the available data concerns actual shootings. I know the NRA has been publishing anecdotes for years about deterrence and self defense uses of firearms, but that is all they are, anecdotes.

I noticed in the comments to the feministing post there were commenters who pointed out the severely questionable nature of the statistics from the VPC the post was relying on. In particular, they ignore the issue of deterrence, leaving it to a footnote. Although, from that footnote (#5) and the following, we learn that there were app 80,000 instances of a crime victim defending themselves with a gun in the early 90s, and fewer then 200 instances of justifiable homicide (defensive killing) in 1998. This suggests that most uses are probably deterrent according to their own statistics

One possible avenue is to look at crime rates in the states where concealed carry laws have been changed to "shall carry". If crime rates go down, and the other variables can be controlled, we may have some evidence.

Donald Clarke

P.S. As for guns being a feminist issue, I think they are more generally a relative power equalizer as Admiral Naismith pointed out. If women think they could profitably use such an equalizer more than men, it may be feminist to that extent. Also, while there may not be formal laws restricting gun ownership by women, I suspect social customs and attitudes tend to do so. Is not part of feminism overcoming such restrictions on what women can and should do?

P.P.S. I am an Army Reservist, so I have some familiarity with guns, but have never owned one myself. As for the Heller decision, I question its reasoning, but maybe it will now allow sensible regulation since the pro-gun forces can no longer say regulation is a covert attempt to take their guns since the 2nd amendment is now recognized as conferring an individual right (yes, I know the radicals will continue to say that, but hopefully they will have more trouble convincing the undecided).

Re: Ignoring deterrence

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The average mugger or burglar will probably deterred by your brandishing a weapon

This is, of course, assuming that easy availablity of guns means that the defender will have a gun, but the attacker will not. Since the attacker was presumably planning on the event, and the defender wasn't, that seems to me to be an optimistic assumption.

If the attacker has a gun too, is the defender's gun deterrence ("Gosh, if I escalate this to a shooting contest I might wind up in bigger trouble than if I just mugged somebody") or does it become a dominance issue ("I can't let the bitch back me down.")?

I agree that in the absence of controlled experiments, it's hard to say which scenarios are most likely. But even supposing (for the sake of argument) that a gun was purely a self-defense tool, and couldn't be used for *anything* else, a tool only benefits a person who has it. If women don't buy this perfect self defense tool, easy availability of this self defense tool doesn't differentially benefit women.

"Educating women about the benefits of gun ownership" could arguably be a feminist issue (though I think gun ownership increases the power of aggressive people more than the power of unagressive people, because there's that willingness-to-pull-the-trigger thing, and women tend to be less aggressive, so I don't think even this is a reasonable argument.) But the argument McArdle was making was something quite different. If what we need to do is educate women (and not men) about the benefits of gun ownership, easy availability of guns is peripheral to that.

Hopefully now that most gun owners can feel confident that we're not trying to "take their guns away" it will be possible to have some rational gun laws like requiring people to pass safety tests in order to own a gun. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re: Ignoring deterrence

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The other thing that occurs to me is that if a gun is deterrence, if all you need to do is *display* the gun to make the criminal back down--

Then you don't *need* a gun. You just need something that *looks* like a gun.

And if it isn't a real gun, 90% of the time and care it costs (making sure every minute that it's not falling into a bad guy's hands, or a child's) goes right out the window. It doesn't matter if the neighbor kids find it; they can't shoot each other. It's not a big deal if a bad guy takes it away from you--now he thinks he has a gun, and you know he's wrong. Mention that the safety is on before you run, if you want to *really* confuse him.

I wonder what the laws on owning gun lookalikes are.