Women Need To Pack A Gun To Avoid Rape, Says GOP Indiana Lawmaker the headline at huffingtonpost.com proclaims. The problem being? I mean that’s good solid advice, right? Well Republican state Rep. Jim Lucas (who posted the image above on his Facebook page) now says he’s sorry he said it. Because . . .
“Critics accused him of blaming unarmed victims rather than attackers, and using rape to push his pro-gun rights agenda.” How exactly does Rep. Lucas’ statement that women should “empower themselves to mitigate their chances of being violently assaulted” equal blaming the victim?
Which brings us to our QOTD. If you — OK, we — point out a missed opportunity for a defensive gun use that could have avoided injury and/or tragedy, is that blaming the victim? Or is it, as we believe, highlighting a teachable moment — one that could save lives?
FYI: Here’s Rep. Lucas’ most recent statement on the controversy.
For all of those saying we need to educate people on the proper language to use when discussing rape, look at the amount of hate on my threads and the intensity of it over something I said that was completely twisted and taken out of context and tell me if you think others are going to be so quick to discuss this issue, fearful that their words will be twisted and they’ll then be subjected to this verbal abuse?
My remarks were completely meant for the positive on this issue, and even if they were insensitive to some, it was purely unintentional and in no way carried any disrespect towards the issue of rape.
The sad irony is that incredible verbal abuse is being used to decry physical abuse, perfectly demonstrating why people are so reticent about discussing rape, which is what the verbal abusers are demanding!
Jim Lucas is squarely over the target, based on the amount of incoming flak. He is the target of coordinated AstroTurf efforts by the SJW Facebook Brigade.
Keep up the good work, Jim. We’ve got your six.
Putting yourself in bad situations is dangerous. It’s a scary and uncertain world out there. To ignore unlikely but possible events will not save you from those events. Give yourself all of the help you can in overcoming those events.
I mean, fires happen every day, but to not have an extinguisher because the chances of it happening are low is naive. We’re not blaming the people for not having a fire extinguisher, we’re just informing people that fires happen and an extinguisher in your hands is your first line of defense.
Asking the question “why wasn’t this a defensive gun use” almost always puts the blame right where it belongs, and that’s not with the victim.
If there’s any blame, it lies with the people who create victims. The politicians who decree that victims won’t be allowed that option and the progressive cretins who have convinced so many people that using effective weapons in their own defense (or even fighting for their own dignity in the first place) is somehow wrong are just as much to blame as the criminal perpetrators. Even more, because politicians and progs victimize far more people than any simple criminal ever could.
^^^ This is why we need a like button.
Nailed it.
It’s only victim blaming if you’ve got an (R) next to your name.
Is it “Blaming the Victim?”.
No.
There are people who are unable or incapable of wielding armed self-defense.
I respect their choice to not carry, if they feel they aren’t up to the responsibility.
For those who are willing to take that responsibility but are unable to do so thanks to bullshit “because guns” laws, yeah, it sould have been a DGU…
No more than saying if he’d been wearing a helmet maybe this motorcycle accident wouldn’t have splattered his brains across the pavement.
Or saying my house burned down because i didnt have smoke alarms and fire extinguishers.
It’s rarely if ever a victim’s fault for being attacked. There are many things that people can do to protect themselves and many lessons others can learn from past victims to be better prepared.
“It’s rarely if ever a victim’s fault for being attacked.” I don’t care how stupid or inviting the victim is or was…they are at best (worst?) a contributing factor, NOT the fault. The fault lies with the perpetrator. That is as bad as a gun grabber saying the gun is at fault.
There are some faux victims out there. Trying to pick a fight, then act like well… a victim when they get hit back. That’s very few though.
I avoid stupid people doing stupid things in stupid places. It minimizes my chances of being robbed or assaulted. Victims of anything could take similar precautions, but everyone is going to set their own levels of being prepared. All anyone can do is help them be more prepared if and when there’s a next time.
“It’s rarely if ever a victim’s fault for being attacked.” I disagree. There are no such things as a victim, if you are an adult. If you are showing specific qualities that a predator looks for before they attack you, versus those qualities that would make you less of a target, then at some level, to me, you are responsible for any predator that might choose you as a target.
I had that experience. I became a target because I showed myself to be vulnerable when I was delivering pizza in the war zone. A predator targets the helpless, the weak and the unaware. At one point, I was walking back from a pizza delivery, totally in the white, totally in my own head walking through what I found out later was a gang haven. And a predator chose me as a target, and tried to mug me. I fought, and barely won, but I learned.
So from that point on, I carried a concealed firearm, I also carried a 4 D cell mag light and I showed good situational awareness. So while I was delivering pizza, I was able to learn to recognize a predator on the hunt, and I was targeted a number of times by a predator when they saw that pizza uniform. So I would turn to face the threat, the human predator saw that I was ready, they saw my lack of fear, and they saw my Mag light in hand, and they would suddenly remember they needed to be some place else. (It was one of the best decisions of my life when I overcame my prejudice and elitist condescension and decided to deliver pizza in the war zone.)
After I stopped delivering pizza, what I learned continue to this day. I keep constant situational awareness while out and about, I recognize a predator when they are on the hunt, and I OC when I am able. And on a couple of occasions, over the many years,(no where near as much as when I was delivering pizza, of course), a predator that had initially looked me over as a potential target always seem to remember they need to be someplace else, quickly, when I showed myself not to be weak, or vulnerable, or unaware, but especially when they saw I was not defenseless.
It’s called reality. Of course it’s not their “fault” that someone chose them to be their next victim, but it is their “fault” that they allowed themselves to be a victim.
For example, if I were to voluntarily move out of my plush suburbia home that holds such amazing secrets of armament complete with a DIY ammo factory in the garage that none of my neighbors would ever have imagined, and moved into a crack house on the north side, would something bad happen to me? Would it be my fault that I was victimized? Making preparations for yourself and family is your duty. It isn’t your fault that you were a victim, but many times, it is your fault that you allowed yourself to be one. If you foresaw a risk but did nothing to mitigate it, then that is a risk you accepted.
The left is training and raising criminals at amazing velocities. I personally, have no control over it. But what do I have control over? I have control over making preparations to counter their activities. It’s that simple. Like gun control, rapists, and murder, you can’t control people with a piece of paper that legislators sign. As a result, it is prudent and your responsibility to make preparations for your own safety and protection. Cops, government officials, and even other citizens (mostly liberals) won’t protect you in your moment of need.
So yes and no.
Atlas and Fountainhead should be mandatory reading for all High School kids If most of them could make their way through it today. And Unintended Consequences !
Start them off with Anthem! It’s a quick, one-sitting read, and makes a good introduction.
So much this.^^^^^^^ That book started my foray into the politics of person hood and personal responsibility over 40 years ago.
Hey, at the very worst it’s hindsight…no big deal.
Blame implies that the person blamed failed in his/her duty to take a required action or to refrain from a prohibited action. It’s inappropriate when the person had no such duty. Women have no duty to go armed because they might become the target of a rapist. It’s the rapist’s duty not to rape whether women are armed or not. Blame him if he fails in that duty. The thing to remember is that apprehending and punishing a rapist doesn’t wipe away the trauma experienced by the victim whereas a gun in her hands can stop it from happening in the first place. It’s something a woman can do for herself that does not reduce her assailant’s culpability.
Don’t let yourself get trapped in their slave morality.
Literally any discussion of rape prevention techniques will draw calls of “blaming the victim” and its all bullshit.
We’re the type of people who talk about self defense and conflict avoidance techniques all the time, and it would never cross anyone’s mind here that any of that is “blaming the victim.”
These people dont want real self defense, they want govt mandated “safe spaces,” disarmament, and punishment for their political enemies.
The phrase ‘Victim blaming’ is used mainly by those who seek to lead people to a particular conclusion,
against those who would short circuit or derail that journey, and offer a simpler and most times better solution.
While it rightly places blame on the attacker, it also absolves the victim completely, removing any responsibility, or options, to avoid similar situations in the future, which preserves victims status as a victim, and precludes any empowerment of said victim.
It’s a part of the new, progressive, politically correct language that is being forced upon us.
1984 called it newspeak.
It is designed to be regurgitated without thought, and, indeed, stifles thought, leading to unthinking compliance.
1984 called that duckspeak.
My thought is that if you have to restructure an entire language to get your point across, then you don’t have much of a point.
If you must coin an entire new phrase to misdirect your target audience away from an obvious solution and
back into your tortuous rhetorical maze, you might not have a point at all.
Nice.
It is easier to accuse someone of “blaming the victim” than to admit your own point of view not only doesn’t do a thing to prevent violence but actually encourages it.
Nothing wrong with victim blaming. I don’t have any pity for people that willingly choose to put their lives in the hands of strangers and then complain or nitpick when it doesn’t go in their favor or to their “standards”.
It’s lazy, a cop out, and immature. Call it such and maybe there will be less people choosing the professional victim lifestyle in the future.
If you keep giving attention to the crying babies, they will never learn and grow up.
I wonder how the TTAG readership would view this comment we’re it to be applied to Illinois residents in relation to the RRA and SA situation.
Yeah it is blaming the victim – to some degree.
Semantics. It might be more correct to say “we wish it had been a defensive gun use”.
Ultimately, it would be nice if we’re any type of defense. Knife, club, mace, etc.
A gun is just the most effective tool.
It’s not really blaming the victim, but TTAG’s “should have been a DGU” series strikes me as pretty hypocritical. We’re constantly calling out assholes like Shannon Watts “waving the bloody shirt” and “dancing the blood of victims”, but somehow it’s okay to do the same thing when it benefits our side? What’s the difference between trying to use a victim who was shot to promote gun control laws and trying to use one who was stabbed or raped to promote gun ownership? Both cases seem pretty iffy to me, ethically.
“somehow it’s okay to do the same thing when it benefits our side?”
Yes it is, because, first, it’s not the same thing; the truth is never the same thing as a lie. And second, it’s okay because we are right and they are lying scumbags.
The two approaches are only superficially similar. The should have been a defensive gun use features are not sensational. They mention the events in sufficient detail only to communicate what happened, and that’s it.
They don’t employ overwrought emotion to cajole people into a political position that can actually leave them worse off. They present the facts of the case and offer a countermeasure which has proven effective in similar cases.
Waving the bloody shirt or dancing in the blood of victims, therefore, exploits people’s emotions for nefarious, disingenuous, political purposes. They’re trying to turn people against guns going forward as a matter of public policy for everyone. The gun use features here only offer up the facts and countermeasures that an individual can take for themselves alone right now.
The approach and purpose are vastly different. It isn’t a matter disparaging something or doing it ourselves, depending upon whether it serves our purpose. The two things aren’t the same thing to begin with.
My concern exactly.
In life in general, the only person who can improve your life is you. The only person who can take steps to be better prepared after being a victim of something is that person themselves.
Shannon Watts wants to take away MY guns. The Left wants to limit everyone because they pretend it will create safety. Shannon Watts wants to limit and hold me back.
TTAG wants to help spread the message about what a person can do to help themselves. A person who takes initiative is empowered. See the difference?
I understand the distinction, but I question the value of this approach. There are plenty of other ways to spread the message without opening yourself up to the criticism that you’re exploiting someone else’s tragedy.
Well I’m not sure I see the problem the left has here, they never cease to blame anyone or anything for whatever bad thing happened. It’s usually the white republicans fault or the guns fault, it’s never the derranged (or terrorist) assailants fault, it’s the guns fault and our lax gun laws (even though the guns were acquired illegally and sometimes completely legally in some of the strictest states, cough cough cali)
And Lucas if you’re receiving this much flak it probably means you’re pointing out something people want to avoid thinking about because it makes them feel icky.
Shouldn’t have backed down, but you are a politician so I shouldn’t expect anything else
[edit] maybe reframing the DGU articles as a lesson for ways to defend yourself. It’s not changing the article but talking about how we can be proactive using reported incidents as a framework
Actually, Lucas hasn’t backed down at all on this issue (or in his Herculean efforts to get constitutional carry passed in Indiana), and can in no way be considered a “typical politician”.
If suggesting that a woman learn to shoot and carry a gun is “blaming the victim”, then isn’t passing laws making it harder for her to acquire her gun “punishing the victim”?
There’s a difference between saying that a crime might have been prevented and saying that the victim is to blame for the crime. Only Democrats and other mental defectives would call it “victim blaming.” Normal people would not.
““Critics accused him of blaming unarmed victims rather than attackers, and using rape to push his pro-gun rights agenda.” ”
He should ALWAYS push back on such a-holes with a HI-HO HEARTY F-U YOU STUPID S.O.B.’S.
Wake up and get off the cat.
I’ve never inferred victim blaming. Most of the ISHBADGU posts blame anti gun laws or anti gun policies. And that is where the blame squarely lies. Nothing will change until gun bearers are given anti discrimination protection. I’m seeing more and more cases of people getting caught at checkpoints with firearms. And I am seeing most of these people who only carry for self defense being severely punished.
It is a Royal pain in the ass to be a gun owner these days. And that’s the way the system wants it.
People play the “blaming the victim” card because they want to divert attention from the relevant matters, that there is danger out there and that you are your own first responder.
Analysis of an event can yield useful insights without delving into value judgments and assignment of blame. Some people not only willfully ignore all inquiry into root causes and potentially effective countermeasures, but actively argue tangencies and irrelevancies to prevent such inquiries. They don’t want answers; they want to preserve the problem as a wedge issue.
I say continue the intelligent inquiry wherever it leads. If someone feels blamed or shamed as a result, then their basic quarrel is with reality, not the inquiry. Work to change the reality of people being victimized then. Problem solved.
Illustrating what someone could have done to greatly reduce the negative outcome of their calamity is NOT victim blaming if:
(1) Their calamity was reasonably foreseeable.
(2) Reasonably easy/cheap mitigating actions were available.
(3) The victim chose not to implement those available actions.
(4) We vociferously condemn the attacker.
An attacker dropping a bowling ball from an airplane which kills you is not reasonably foreseeable. And mitigating action for such a calamity (always being in an armored vehicle and/or always having a portable radar array with you wherever you go) is not easy nor cheap. Therefore, we would be blaming the victim if we said the victim should have done something.
Now consider violent crime: victims report more than 1 million violent crimes to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. every year. Thus, being the victim of violent crime is reasonably foreseeable. And, for about $320 you could purchase a nice used handgun and a box of ammunition which would be quite effective at stopping nearly all violent crimes. In my world that $320 is a reasonable cost and carrying a handgun is reasonably easy. Finally, I still say that all attacker are scumbags who should spend many years in a cage. Therefore, it is not “blaming the victim” when we say that the victim probably would have sustained far fewer injuries had they been armed.
Victim blaming? Nah…women(and men) need to have their shite together.
Suppose that a parent and 16 year-old daughter are returning home from the beach.
During the ride, the daughter starts swearing at the parent in an act of utter contempt and disrespect. So the parent stops the car, tells the daughter to get out and find her own way home, and drives away. Unfortunately for the daughter, she is very attractive, wearing only a bikini, it is after dark, she has no cell phone, she is in a high-crime neighborhood, and she knows no one. If someone rapes her, can we honestly say that the parent has absolutely no responsibility and all of the blame rests on the shoulders of the rapist? Answer: emphatic no … the parent will be prosecuted for child neglect or similar.
If the parent in that case has committed a wrong with respect to their child, how does an adult not commit a wrong with respect to themselves when they do the same? (The “same” would be an attractive adult woman who struts into a high-crime neighborhood after dark wearing only a bikini.)
Sure, the rapist is always a scumbag who should spend their life in a cage. And the person who willfully puts themselves in a vulnerable position and refuses to take basic precautions is a fool.
Foolishness isn’t illegal unless it harms someone else. Of course, Darwin isn’t so forgiving.
I’ve always thought that the tag line would be more appropriate as “could” have been a defensive gun rather than being “should”. Saying someone “should” have been armed, while I don’t believe is tantamount to blaming the victim, discounts the notion that not everyone wants to be or actually should be armed.
Honestly, I think we should focus more on those instances of ACTUAL defensive gun uses. That’s hard data that we can point at and say “See? It works.”
“Should have” and “could have” isn’t any better than “they’ll just take it away from you and use it themselves!”
Victims create vulnerabilities, criminals make use of them. Plain and simple. Failure to recognise and prepare for the dangers is the victims’ fault. Thinking somehow you are entitled to safety without doing your share to earn it is a mental deficiency. No one in this world is responsible to not affect you with his actions. There are ways to make that cost-prohibitive so that you are left alone, but a free person is a free person, doing good/harm to you as he pleases, once he determines that benefit overrides the cost.
A person’s actions are based on his own moral compass and cost-benefit analysis. What’s “wrong” to 99% of the public, may not be so to that remaining 1%. And there’s nothing you can do to change that, other than defending against him during the process, or punishing him after the fact.
There’s a difference between “how the world should be” and “how it really is”. Liberals should learn to face it.