With yesterday’s kick-off of “Domestic Violence Awareness Month” the anti-gun Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America announced the launch of a “domestic gun violence awareness campaign” about the same time as a blogger noted on the Bustle website that the percentage of female gun owners is rising.
Referring to a Gallup poll, the Bustle article noted, “Between 2005 and 2011, the percentage of American women who own a gun nearly doubled, rising from 13 to 23 percent.”
Meanwhile, yesterday’s Collegiate Times published a column suggesting that women should lead the battle against “gun violence.”
If one believes the Gallup data, it appears many women are doing just that, by arming themselves to deter violence or at least put an abrupt end to it.
“What the gun prohibitionists ignore,” noted Gila Hayes with the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network, “is the violent domestic partner's almost unlimited ability to kill or cripple the battered spouse by a wide variety of means. Since you can't legislate violence out of existence, it seems to me that it makes better sense to allow the intended victim an effective means of defending herself -- a firearm.”
Hayes, who is also a firearms instructor, author and is on staff at the Firearms Academy of Seattle, has been teaching women to shoot defensively and recreationally for several years. No stranger to controversy, she has authored a book titled “Concealed Carry for Women.”
Another emerging authority on women and guns is Emily Miller, the award-winning senior opinion editor at the Washington Times. Her story about the labyrinth of gun regulations involved in obtaining a handgun to keep at home for personal protection is the core element of “Emily Gets Her Gun…But Obama Wants to Take Yours,” which she autographed last Saturday at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Houston.
That was after she was honored as the only two-time back-to-back recipient of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Journalist of the Year award. Last year she earned the title for her award-winning series on gun laws in Washington, D.C., and this year she won because of the book.
While Moms Demand Action push the same warmed-over gun control agenda pandered by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Brady Campaign and other segments of the anti-rights lobby, people like Hayes and Miller advocate a different option. Gun prohibitionists and their media cheerleaders really hate that.
Speaking of hate, Miller noted on her Facebook page yesterday that “Every time I go on CNN, my twitter/email/FB fill up with hate and profanity. Never happens when I go on Fox. Why?”
Here is what the Moms group wants:
- Members of the House to co-sponsor H.R. 1565, the King/Thompson bill, which would extend background checks to private and online sales of firearms.
- The Senate to bring the Manchin/Toomey bill back to the Senate floor and pass it. This legislation would also expand the background check system and close loopholes that would help keep guns out of dangerous hands.
- Both chambers to commit to working on and supporting legislation to protect abused women, like S. 1290, the "Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act of 2013;" H.R. 2648, the "Keeping Guns from High Risk Individuals Act;" H.R. 1914, the "Preventing Victims of Stalking Act of 2013;" and, H.R. 1177, the "Domestic Violence Survivor Protection Act."
One might argue that all of this sounds good, and will probably get a headline, but when genuine life-threatening trouble comes calling, does a woman want a piece of paper to she can wave in an attacker’s face, or a gun she can stick in his face? What might be the better deterrent to violence?
October is also National Popcorn Popping Month, National Adopt-A-Shelter Dog Month, National Bullying Prevention Month, National Substance Abuse Prevention Month, National Dental Hygiene Month, National Farm to School Month and National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And that may just scratch the surface of national “what” months October has been designated.
One more designation probably will not mean much to some violent ex-boyfriend or crazy stalker who wants to create his own version of Halloween, but the muzzle of a pistol in the hands of a would-be female victim just might impress the hell out of them.
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