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“A gun isn’t just a weapon—it’s also an unambiguous way to signal to someone that they should fuck off and leave you alone. And if you’re a woman in need of an unambiguous way to signal that someone should fuck off and leave you alone, history, data, and the plain old common sense that comes from living in the world suggest that someone is probably a man.” – Ashley Fetters in Why Women Own Guns [via gq.com]

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52 COMMENTS

  1. Whatever that gibberish meant, the takeaway is, brandishing is a crime in most states. Wave your gun around in traffic and repeat that blather to the multiple cops who are going to do a felony stop on your stupid ass. And that Miley Gyrus looking twit in the picture pretty much sums up such stupidity.

    • That’s why open carry is a thing. It’s much easier and far more legal to give a meaningful look to the holstered gun under your arm or on your hip.

      • Without delving into the quagmire of OC vs CC, my particular state does not allow OC. Openly displaying a firearm off your private property is a FELONY offense, and it only takes the written statement of the complaintant to have an arrest warrant issued. So, unless Trump passes national OC in violation of states rights, around here brandishing gets you a trip to the slammer, with your gun confiscated, and no legal purchase while the felony charge awaits adjudication.

        • How can you violate states rights when the states are violating the rights of their citizens? How can we claim 1a or 2a rights if the state and 51% of its voters are for violating those rights?

          If the feds have no rights over the states then there is no constitution, no BOR. Your rights are only what your neighbors say they are then.

        • Yeah… The federal government has every authority to enforce the CotUS against the states. The 2nd amendment was incorporated under the 14th. If Trump signs a federal preemption of all state level firearms laws, there is jack shit any state can do about it.

        • Without delving into Federalism, do you really want Trump signing EOs that states “cant do jack shit about?” Do we want another pen and phone President, circumventing Congress so long as he does what we like? What if Trump flips on guns, like he seems to be doing with phony global warming? Be careful what you wish for….

        • Well, theres nothing “clearly” about your arguments. In fact between your hopscotching between Legislative law and EOs, and that toungue chewing moron in the article, I completely lost track of whatever this was supposed to be about.

          So I will sum up by stating the obvious: Glock makes the best combat handguns in this solar system.

        • Trump doesn’t need to pass anything. The Constitution already covers the issue. Article IV, Section 1.

          Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

          My driver’s LICENSE works in every state and no one whines about state’s rights. My marriage LICENSE works in every state and no one whines about state’s rights. But my Georgia Weapons Carry LICENSE only works in Georgia. Why?

        • Fred: Well if that happens, I’m sure you will be saying, “Oh, if only Hillary had won, things would be so much better.”

        • @ragnarredbeard, your driver’s license is recognized by all the states because of an interstate compact (agreement) between the states. But if you’re 16 and are fully licensed to drive in State A, you could still be an illegal underage driver in State B. And each state has it’s own speed limits, so if State As limit is 75 and State Bs limit is 65, you’re going to get a ticket for going the legal limit that would apply in your own state.

          Your marriage is recognized in all states because it’s the equivalent of a court decree. Of course, that wasn’t always true. It took a lot of court cases to validate marriages between persons of different races or persons of the same sex.

          And if licenses always get full faith and credit, why didn’t my New York license to practice law entitle me to handle cases in Florida?

        • I feel so picked on by the hurly burly internet gunkatas here I am pointing my G22 at the computer screen and making pew pew noises! Brandish that!

        • > If Trump signs a federal preemption of all state level firearms laws, there is jack shit any state can do about it.

          Sure they can. They can just ignore said EO, and continue enforcing their laws as they did before. Then what?

      • “That’s why open carry is a thing. It’s much easier and far more legal to give a meaningful look to the holstered gun under your arm or on your hip.

        If you’re truly feeling threatened, why the heck would you take your eyes off the threat?

    • Is brandishing always a crime? If you feel threatened and you pull a gun but don’t fire it because the situation de-escalated, is THAT brandishing? Perhaps, but you are not the aggressor. This woman writes about why various other women are buying and carrying guns, and the reason is no different than why we all do, for defense of self and loved ones. The writer goes off on a tirade about breaking up with a guy cause he seemed to like his gun too much, but later events show, in my opinion, that she realized that he scared her and she thinks it’s the gun that did it. I would reason that the gun wasn’t dangerous but he was. With some calm and rational discussion I believe she could be firmly in the pro-gun camp, and that’s always good. But assuming she means something or if she is wording her thoughts in a way that makes you want to point the accusatory finger towards her does no one any good.

      • In my carry class, we were instructed to always call the police and notify them if we displayed our weapon so as to avoid a brandishing charge should a perp cry foul.

    • Fred, you are half right. A person cannot brandish without a threat or they face felony charges. However, there are stages to threats (check your local laws) and brandishing can sometimes/often deescalate before there is a need for lethal force. Personally, if someone is coming at me with a baseball bat… I’d rather say “dude, stay back, I have a gun” than just pull my conceal carry out and start pulling the trigger.

      • Now, if this hypothetical person with the hypothetical bat (or any weapon really) doesn’t stop and swings at me, that’s the time I’d choose to draw. I still wouldn’t take a shot yet, but then, I personally would prefer to explain why I drew a weapon than why I fired

      • FWIW, I took two Self Defense Law classes at the NRA HQ, taught by two lawyers, a criminal defense attorney and a former prosecutor. The were focusing on Virginia law, but said this applies in most states:

        Brandishing, absent justification, is a crime, usually a felony. It can be charged as high as aggravated assault, because that charge does not require actual bodily harm, just putting someone in fear of grave bodily harm. Just like actually shooting someone, there can be an affirmative legal defense for brandishing of “Self-Defense.” In Virginia, the justification is the same as for actually shooting: “An imminent threat of grave bodily harm.” Most states have some version of that.

        So bottom line in most places: You are only justified in brandishing if you are also justified in shooting. OC laws do not always help. If the person who claims you brandished can convince a jury you put your hand near your gun in a way that suggested you might use it, that is still brandishing.

        • I did say that brandishing without a threat is a felony. I prefer to solve a problem at the lowest possible level. Calling attention to a threat loudly, moving away from a threat physically, warning a threat verbally, showing a weapon, under ideal circumstances should all come before shooting. Of course there’s every chance I could be hit in the back of the head with no warning and have to defend myself from the ground where the jump would be straight to drawing. Thankfully I live in Utah where the law punishes escalation and the burden of proof is on the state in self defense cases. A dude with a baseball bat coming at me is far more escalated than shouting “Don’t swing that bat at me, I have a gun”.

        • Taken straight from HB0078 ” (1) (a) A person is justified in threatening or using force against another when and to
          36 the extent that [he or she] the person reasonably believes that force or a threat of force is
          37 necessary to defend [himself] the person or a third person against [such other’s] another
          38 person’s imminent use of unlawful force.

          Note the “person reasonably believes” portion. In my scenario, if I shouted to stay back because I’m armed, the state would have to prove that a reasonable person would think a the bad guy with a baseball bat would totally just stop and walk away for no apparent reason; therefore, mentioning I’m armed is somehow attacking him.

        • That really depends. IN AZ we specifically changed the law a few years ago. The threshold for “threatening to shoot” somebody is far lower than the legal justification for actually doing so.

    • If a man is harassing/following/otherwise bothering a woman to the point where she flashes her gun to make him leave her alone, I don’t think there is a jury in this country that would convict her of brandishing. Just saying.

      • In most states, the case would never go to a jury. No charge would be brought in the first place against the woman. If George Zimmerman was Georgina Zimmerman, would she have been charged? I don’t think so.

        Men and women are treated differently by law because the average woman is generally weaker than her attacker. Disparity of force matters.

      • I tend to think that using a gun to signal your desire for someone to ‘fuck off and leave me alone’ is pretty much the definition of brandishing.

        • And where did you get the idea of “using your gun”? Often, the mere sight of a holstered firearm sends the very same message: passively, safely, and lawfully.

          But, insofar as the message-sending is active and intentional, so long as it is a reasonable response to a threat, it is lawful self-defense, and not unlawful brandishing.

  2. Once again, it’s glaringly obvious that the author, Ms. Fetters, didn’t bother with even the slightest bit of research before writing her article.
    She writes that the pharmacist carries an M&P shield “in” her bra.
    Then writes that it’s a flash bang bra holster.
    I quit reading her story after about the third paragraph.

    • Not exactly. The author says she carries in her bra and on her waist. Then later the author says the Flash Bang is her favorite holster. That does not logically preclude the idea that she may occasionally actually carry in her bra, however unlikely. But please allow me the mental image that her bra is big enough to hold an M&P Shield. It brightens my day, LOL.

  3. I don’t remember exactly how it went but that old saying about gun control giving a 105 pound woman the right to fight hand to hand with a 200 pound male rings very true.

    Gun control simply creates victims. It does nothing else.

  4. The article is just another agenda-fest.

    Anyone that refers to The Trace as a “gun research publication” had an agenda.

    That’s just one example…

  5. The quote is clunky but it seems she is supportive if women owning (and in context with the larger article) and training with guns. This is a positive quote.

    Edit: Okay this quote is an acorn in the woods found by a sight impaired swine.

  6. Lots of negative comments above. And, yeah.

    But I choose to see this as a sign of progress (the good kind), even if it seems begrudging and not as accurate as we might like.

    • It’s positive in that most of the subjects of the article are gun owning women. However I got an overall confusing, negative vibe from the author: Women are so much more likely to be killed, raped, victimized than men are- Men are the most likely people to commit a crime against women- Men scare women with guns. Yet after spitting all of that out, the author doesn’t understand why women want guns?

  7. The article is on the whole positive to gun ownership.

    The author, on the other hand, is not so sure because she seem confused by Women wanting to own firearms for any reason…. “But these days, a curiously large proportion of U.S. gun owners are women”

    Miss Fetters, it is only curious to those who think women unfit to own and/or carry firearms you sexist fuckwit.

  8. Actually, most day-to-day, non-violent aggression toward women, i.e., in the workplace, tends to come from other women more than men. Now, if she specifically said criminal violence, which is what she seems to mean, then she’s right.

  9. But the larger question remains unanswered – Why are these writers, especially women, so untalented that they do not believe they can make an effective, emphatic point in their argument without constant resource to obscenity?

    Is this really the best journalism classes can turn out these days?

  10. Great that more women are arming themselves.
    Kind of sad that so many women, by the sound of the article, default to a state of “lesser than” when a man is around.
    Learned behavior from dating assholes? The View told you life was this way? Too many Lifetime movies?
    My boss is a woman and I’ve heard from her many times lines like “you don’t mind coming into an empty building because you’re a man” or “walking out to your car at night is no big deal for you because you’re a man.”

    What’s with this ever present sense of helplessness? Is it really ubiquitous among women?

    • NO it’s not Shire-man. My wife taught selfdefense years ago at the YWCA. It seems to infect goofy white women. Real women are brave and courageous. And my wife was also a boss running a large hotel at one time. Lots of gals love the helpless bit-I hate that crap…

    • “walking out to your car at night is no big deal for you because you’re a man.”

      I most certainly have walked to my car at night in some not so friendly areas and had my head on a swivel. I once had to spend an uncomfortably long time waiting for someone at a DART station in South Dallas at 10:00 pm. It’d be an understatement to say I was a bit nervous.

  11. I guess this is progress. But the author couldn’t help sticking in garbage like this:

    “Though it’s worth noting: The “good guy”—or gal—”with a gun” scenario has been disproven time and time again.”

    And then the writer links to a study which looked at self-protection (SP) and rape completion and showed that fighting back with a gun lowered the risk of rape completion:

    “Both forms of resistance with a gun -“attack with a gun” and “threat with a gun”- are also associated with lower risk compared to no SP”

  12. So many unsettling things about that article. The big, anonymous scary photographs for one. Like why is she modeling bad behavior by having a finger in the trigger guard with the gun off target? Even worse, her index is poised over the magazine release, a particularly bad habit if one’s gun has a mag disconnect. Another thing is the writer’s obsession with the word “curiously”. “Ly” adverbs are a lazy or unobservant writer’s crutch. What’s curious about a women wanting a firearm?

    “It bothers me when conservatives think liberals want to take everyone’s guns away. For the most part, I think liberals just want stricter gun laws, which I strongly support.”

    Finally, the truth. With Trump’s election, previously uninterested liberals have discovered a new taste for guns. With every new 2A restricting law, the cost of ownership rises. The reality is extremists on both sides of the isle would be happy to price the common man and woman out of gun ownership.

  13. “it’s also an unambiguous way to signal to someone that they should fuck off and leave you alone…”

    Someone carrying a gun as a signally method is doing it wrong.

    Well… unless it’s a flare gun.

  14. When Fetters wrote “it’s worth noting: The “good guy”—or gal—”with a gun” scenario has been disproven time and time again,” she exposed herself for what she really is.

    • and then she “supported” her statement by linking to at least one study that completely supports the good guy with a gun mantra and refutes her own statement.

  15. Seeing that nasty shit sticking out of her tongue is weapon enough for me to stay at least 20 feet away so I don’t catch anything.

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