In preparation for her July 30 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s ill-named Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act, women’s boxing champion Christy Martin penned a commentary explaining why guns are bad. Titled My Gun Didn’t Protect Me, she explains how her former husband almost murdered her. My normal modus operandi is to break gun grabbers’ pieces into small bits, the better to demolish them. In this instance, though, I want you to get the full story of the attack . . .
For 20 years, my ex-husband Jim said he would kill me if I ever tried to leave him. On November 23, 2010 — the day I told him that I wanted a divorce — he tried his best to stay true to his word. That night, Jim came into my room and said he had to show me something. I could see the knife sticking out of his shorts. I couldn’t see the gun in his pocket.
Before I could react, he assaulted me, stabbing me and leaving me bleeding on the ground, despite my best attempts to fight back. He then stood at my feet, pulled out the gun, aimed at my chest and shot. The weapon was my own pink 9 mm Glock.
The bullet missed my heart by 4 inches. Jim, thinking I was dead, left the room to shower the blood off. I used the opportunity to escape …
I’m a woman who knows how to defend herself. As one of the most successful female boxers of all time, I made a career of dispatching would-be assailants. But all my years of training proved useless when my abusive husband decided he would murder me with my own weapon.
I don’t want to be a cold-hearted bastard and I truly do feel sorry for anyone who has endured a horrific assault like this. But I must say. my first thought on reading her story was. what an epic fail on so many levels.
First, according to her own testimony at his trial, her husband had a history of physically abusing her and had, for twenty years promised that he would kill her if she left him. So the night she told him she was leaving, why was she still in the house? Why was she alone with him? Why the hell didn’t she have her gun with her instead of leaving it where he could get his hands on it?
Finally, her training wasn’t useless when her husband tried to murder her with a gun, it was useless when he tried to murder her with a knife.
But there is more fail to come:
It was, in the end, pure luck that saved me from becoming one of the 48 women shot to death by a current or former boyfriend or spouse every month.
I am still a gun owner and a proud supporter of the Second Amendment. That said, my experience serves to illustrate how deadly guns can be in the hands of deranged domestic abusers like Jim…
Christy’s stated goal, to keep guns out of the hands of “deranged domestic abusers,” sounds great on the surface. Who can argue against that? But like so many apparently laudable goals, the devil is in the details. For example, the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban (often referred to as the Lautenberg Amendment) passed in 1997 and was touted as having a similar goal; keeping “deranged domestic abusers” from murdering an intimate partner. Unfortunately we ended up with men (primarily) discovering that a 20- or 30-year-old misdemeanor DV charge that they pled to (“it’s no worse than a traffic ticket; it won’t even show up on your record; it’s cheaper than paying a lawyer” etc.) has resulted in a lifetime ban on firearms for them.
Furthermore Martin even admits that she prefers that no one have a gun:
Some argue that removing guns from abusive situations takes away women’s best means of protecting themselves. Before my husband used my own gun against me, I may have agreed.
So because Christy was carless and unprepared, she thinks all women must be rendered helpless in the face of larger attackers? Wait, there’s more information (and another level of fail) to be gleaned from Christy’s story. In an interview with MSNBC she gave more detail about the attack:
“As I lay there, I could hear the gurgling. I knew my lung had been ruptured, but I wasn’t dying fast enough,” Martin told MSNBC on Wednesday. “So he came back 30 minutes later and shot me with my own 9mm.”
So even though her husband completely surprised her and stabbed her repeatedly, if she’d had her gun on her, she would have had 30 minutes in which she might have been able to shoot her husband and prevent any further attack.
But let us, for a moment, play “What if?” What if she hadn’t had a gun? What if her husband hadn’t found it and used it to try to kill her more quickly? How might Christy’s story have differed if all he’d had was a knife? It might have gone something like this:
The assailant entered the room, apparently surprising the victim and assaulted her, stabbing her and leaving her bleeding on the ground, despite her best attempts to fight back. He then stood at her feet, pulled out the knife again, knelt on her chest and slit her throat.
Not really a happier ending, is it? But Martin seems oblivious to what might have happened had her husband not found her gun. She writes:
Women in domestic conflicts are nearly 10 times more likely to be threatened or shot with a gun than to use the gun in self-defense.
Really? Tell me Christy, how did you go about collecting your data? What are your sources?
As a result, the very presence of a gun in a domestic conflict makes it five times more likely that the woman will be killed.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; abusive scumbags aren’t going to shoot their partner for burning the pot roast or to “teach them to mind”, they typically pull a gun in order to kill said partner. This isn’t a function of the evil Svengali-like mind-warping powers of firearms, it’s a result of the evil warped minds of abusive scumbags.
Finally Christy lets fly with just a flat out lie:
Federal law, however, still allows large numbers of convicted domestic abusers to own guns.
Sorry hon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) specifically states:
(g) It shall be unlawful for any person …
(9) who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.
So unless you’re stretching the definition of “domestic abuser” all out of shape, that just ain’t so.
No, what we have here is a woman who, despite her training and mindset, didn’t protect herself from an abusive spouse and is in serious denial about the root causes of her injuries. She blames them on the firearm she failed to use properly, and is pushing for a law which, had it been in effect before her husband attacked her, would not have affected the outcome of her ordeal in the slightest.