I’ve scheduled a post tomorrow on how to frame the argument that gun control advocates can’t win: guns stop rape. Ahead of that piece, I’d like to point out that the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex is up in arms about today’s quote of the day from Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore. Ms. Fiore said “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them.” Bilious billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s mob, Everytown for Gun Safety, sent out an email blast today claiming, “This grotesque display of opportunism is beyond the pale.” Irony: the bloody shirt-wavers in the gun grabbing biz don’t do it. Here’s the reasoning behind their claim that guns don’t stop rape. Well, most rape . . .
By saying that guns will prevent rape, they’re putting the burden on the victims. And they’re denying the indisputable fact that the vast majority of campus assaults are perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance — the types of people around whom people would never think to carry a gun.
Everytown is telling its peeps that arming women against rapists is a bad idea because it puts the “burden” on victims. (Note: people who wouldn’t be victims if they were armed.) The burden of…defending against rapists. You heard it here first. Everytown for Gun Safety considers self-defense a burden; not a responsibility or obligation (as it is in the Jewish tradition). A burden.
The implied corollary: the “burden” for not raping should be on the rapist. You know; not to not rape. I suppose that’s true enough. Well, not enough. Some. Anyway, good luck with getting potential rapists to lay off the rape thing without a gun pressed to their temple. Or at least the threat of same.
The second sentence is equally egregious.
Everytown’s is boldly asserting that armed women on campus wouldn’t think to carry a gun around a partner, friend or close acquaintance. To paraphrase the TV ad, that’s not how it works. You carry a gun against the possibility of an attack by anyone, anywhere, any time. If you consider a gun rape deterrence – as you should – who would be more deterred than someone who knows about the gun like . . . a partner, friend or close acquaintance.
But the real offense here is the phrase “the vast majority.”
By saying that “the vast majority of campus assaults are perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance,” Everytown is admitting that some rapes aren’t perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance. What about those rapes? Does Everytown believe that women raped by strangers don’t count? That we should ignore these crimes; indeed leave women defenseless against them?
This from the group that lobbies for gun control laws under the banner, “If it saves just one life….” Shame on them. On the positive side, the failed rhetoric creates an enormous opportunity for gun rights advocates to put these craven statists in their place. Read the recipe tomorrow.