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(courtesy wagv.org)

“Seventeen years ago, I was raped,” an anonymous author reveals in Why guns on campus will not make women safer at wagv.org. “I had a gun in my purse.” Not to diminish the author’s pain or anguish, not to place the blame on anyone or anything but her rapist for the assault, but off-body carry is not ideal in any situation. I try very hard to conceal in a way that I KNOW I can get to the gun before a criminal can lay hands on me. And while nothing is sure in this life, it’s surely better to have a gun, a chance to defend yourself with a gun, than not. There. Story over. But it goes on, Here’s her description of the incident [paragraph breaks added] . . .

On March 6, 1998, my best friend Michella came to visit for her 21st birthday weekend. I stopped for gas about twenty minutes before I was to meet up with her and some friends. I had a hippie bag slung over my shoulder with my gun inside. I noticed an old friend, Mason, who was also a soldier, by the side of the Marathon station so I stopped to catch up with him before pumping my gas.

Because my husband and I had been fighting, throwing around the “divorce” word, I unloaded on Mason, telling him everything. He appeared sympathetic, hugging me, rubbing my shoulders, letting me cry on his shoulder. He comforted me. He started to rub my back again, when I noticed it was time for me to leave.

I tried to pull away but within a split second I was face down on the bench seat of his truck with a knife to my throat held by his right hand and his gun pressed against my left shoulder, aimed at my head. I had no time to reach for my own gun that was literally inches from my hand. Time slowed, I disassociated from my own body and could see the whole incident as it happened.

Somehow, in spite of all my training, I knew I couldn’t take his life. I knew the trauma caused by taking his life would be impossible to overcome. I knew, with his military training, I’d be killed. The entire incident lasted less than three minutes. He threatened my life, and the lives of my family and husband. As I got out of the car, I could have shot him, easily. But I was still in shock. I somehow made it to my car and left.

The author concludes that “not everyone is equipped to handle the responsibility that comes with owning a gun” because some women “lack training, and many aren’t able to think clearly through the rush of fear and adrenaline.”

The first part is true. The second, not so much. Each year, tens of thousands of Americans, some say over a million, successfully defend their lives and property with a gun. Despite the “rush of fear and adrenaline.”

Speaking to the author’s experience, not all women would have been unable to get to their gun. Not all woman would have been hesitant to pull the trigger on a molester or rapist. Some would have taken the shot. But ALL women have a right to keep and bear arms, no matter what any one women has experienced or believes.

There are other ways to protect ourselves from sexual assault; education, harsher consequences for offenders, and teaching college kids to stay in groups, especially after dark, are a start.

Instead of inspiring and empowering women to defend themselves against assault, the author wants society to take care of the problem. Meanwhile, college kids should cower collectively. “Let’s table the gun discussion and find other viable solutions that don’t put women at greater risk for being murdered with a gun,” she concludes. How ironic – and naive – can you get?

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103 COMMENTS

  1. As per usual we’re supposed to believe that being unarmed is somehow going to create a situation where you’re can’t ever be harmed. Even worse they got some poor deluded professional victim that was harmed to be the poster child for they’re bull shait.

    Every day and every crap opinion piece I read from this kind of mindset makes me view these people less and less as human and thus no really worthy of any basic respect or protection.

    • Oh they’re human all right; they’re just human prey, and they think all other humans should be just like them.

    • Its too bad she had that gun. Had she been unarmed, I’m sure he would have settled for a peck on the cheek and a good night.

      • Sounds to me like more of the same. It’s a tool, not a magic talisman that wards off rapists and evil doers. If her “training,” and I’m afraid I have to doubt those credentials, didn’t cover things like situational awareness and the will to fight, then it failed her miserably. And if she was willing to “train” and carry a weapon but not use it, that failure is hers alone. In fact, that irritates me- how many women would’ve given anything for a gun “inches away” in similar situations? And because they didn’t, how many of them aren’t alive today and able to use their personal tragedy as a soapbox for an ill-rationalized opinion?

  2. The issue is choice, she chose to carry, she chose off body, she chose to not defend, she chose submission, she chose not to kill afterwards. She chose to share her story which in the end empowers rapists and relays with a gun comes responsibility…yes the responsibility to use it against a criminal.

    Why are we subject to this nonsense?

    • Summed it up beautifully.

      She made the decision to carry, but she didn’t make the decision to not be a victim. One is of no use without the other.

      • Exactly.

        On a more sympathetic vein, many, many people (notice I didn’t say women) are raped by someone they know. This is probably a huge contributor to how many rapes are not prosecuted and how many rapists are still breathing.

    • Perfectly said. She chose to carry she also chose not to defend herself or seek justice immediately afterwards…. all her choice to which she is welcome to make….. we to deserve the opportunity to chose defense or capitulation and that is what the 2nd is all about

    • “Why are we subject to this nonsense?”

      Because there’s a subtext in messages like this. What they’re saying is “why aren’t the rest of you like me?”. She knows there are women like Sarah who are decidedly not like her and it makes her feel guilty. And that’s something she really, really hates.

      So it was her “old friend” who raped her? Seems to me, that was her real problem. Not many people, male or female, have old friends who would commit an act of violence like that. Rather than trying to make other women as weak as she feels she is, perhaps she should focus on making better friends.

    • When I read this to my wife, she got really pissed off. not at the rapist, but at the woman for being such a wimp and a willing victim.

      God help the person who ever comes after my wife, because she will fight and she knows how with a gun or her hands and feet. As the old mountain men said in the film of the same name, the enemy may win, but that’ll be AFTER the fight.

  3. Was she murdered with a gun? No? did her concealed carry make her attack worse? No? I don’t get the line of reasoning here. She made herself vulnerable to her attacker, and even in the midst of the attack, she rationalized that she would have been unwilling to hurt him anyway. Her being armed didn’t make the situation worse, and through HER CHOICE didn’t make it better either.

    How did he rape her with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other anyway? I’m guessing that she just froze like a cornered rabbit, so maybe someone with that kind of response to threat shouldn’t carry.

    Is Mason in prison now? Did she even report the rape?

  4. Every time I meet someone looking to buy their first gun, I ask them to take time alone to ask themselves if they really think they can kill another human. I tell them if the answer is “no”, do not – do not, buy a gun. Waving a gun around hoping to deter an attacker is useless, at best. The problem the woman at issue faced was not “off body” carry, but failure to cross the human death threshold. No matter how many and what type protection training she would or could have, she was unable to defend herself mentally. For such persons, carrying or owning a gun is wrong and dangerous.This is an entirely different scenario than the hypothetical instance of carrying a weapon for self defense. The woman at question was not armed at all. People (even women) who are mentally prepared to take a life are not at more risk because they have a weapon at hand. I am not even sure the article under discussion is even news-worthy.

    • Exactly.

      If you’re not willing to use a gun, and to learn how to use it well, then don’t even bother.

  5. … I was face down on the bench seat of his truck with a knife to my throat held by his right hand and his gun pressed against my left shoulder, aimed at my head.

    I am going to have to call BS on this statement. First of all, I have never, ever heard of a rapist using both a knife and a handgun during a rape. More importantly, it is physically impossible to hold a weapon in each hand and control the victim and undress and facilitate the rape. Also important, a rapist would not need two weapons — either the knife or handgun would be perfectly capable of providing deadly force to gain submission of the victim.

    I knew, with his military training, I’d be killed.

    Right, because the military trains soldiers how to flex their muscles and become temporarily bulletproof … or not. Again, I am going to call BS on this statement.

    Of ultimate importance, there isn’t a whole lot that anyone can do when a trusted person suddenly turns on us and attacks us. That type of attacker will nearly always succeed.

    • Agreed. As soon as I read the knife in one hand gun in the other bit I called BS. This story is complete hog wash.

    • This story is as ridiculous as a Rolling Stone – Duke University piece.

      And either way, her firearm didn’t make her less safe, so even if her anonymous story is true, what the hell was the point?

      • The point was/is to reinforce the notion that having a gun doesn’t prevent rape, doesn’t really provide for self-defense, and if you use it you will be mentally scarred for life. why bother with a gun?

    • Good call. If the “rapist” had a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, how did he remove her clothes? Spread her legs apart?

      • uuuhhmmm, i can think of a rape technique that allows both hands to be threatening the victim, simultaneously. once you have complete control over a victim, one can demand and force whatever action wanted.

    • I agree with uncommon_sense’s points. But there’s more:

      One instant she realized she could not get to her gun, the next she concludes she did not want to, could not use it even if it were in hand? Why, then, the first thought, whether she could get to her gun? Why bother?

      I had no time to reach for my own gun that was literally inches from my hand. Time slowed, I disassociated from my own body and could see the whole incident as it happened. … Somehow, in spite of all my training, I knew I couldn’t take his life. All her training? For a finale she points out that she could have murdered “Mason” as she got out of his “car” (which two paragraphs above was a “truck).” As I got out of the car, I could have shot him, easily. I don’t believe the writer knows the difference between self-defense and murder. Therefore I believe her reference to her training is a lie. This removes the last vestige of her credibility. Send the story to Rolling Stone.

      I find the reference to the alleged attacker’s military background offensive beyond words.

      • “You neglected the third choice, she made the whole story up.”

        Wha…. What? A woman would LIE about rape?

        That *never* happens…

        *gag*

        • it doesn’t matter if, in fact, she lied.

          she brings attention to a subject in an effort to heighten awareness of something really, like really, important.

  6. The problem with people like that is that they think since they couldn’t use a gun, no one else should be able to either. If she can’t think clearly and/or couldn’t bring herself to shoot a rapist, then she shouldn’t carry a gun. but she needn’t assume everyone is the same as she is.

    • but she represents the viewpoint of the mythical “reasonable person”. a “reasonable person” concludes always concludes that an action they are incapable of is impetus for saving other “reasonable persons” from whatever it is the “reasonable person” cannot do. and these folks are the jury pool for trials involving firearms.

  7. I GET it……………because she wimped out at the decisive moment, the rest of us should basically do the same. That is full of fail on so many levels.

  8. I dont see how any of her suggestions would have stopped her situation from happening, unless he had been previously convicted. If that was the case than he would be a registered sex offender, and someone, whether herself or a mutual friend, would have known. I’m not blaming her for the rape either, but I just don’t see how we need to drop the gun argument, but not the others, especially the education argument. Do they not teach that rape is immoral or societally unacceptable? if not in school, than surely grandma, mom, or someone has mentioned it.

  9. That story is pure BS, she just made it up, probably at the behest of some ex-mayor.

    Plus, if her story is true, she had a gun in her bag which she could reach, and she decided not to, then it was not rape.

    • Just because she was allegedly too terrified to resist doesn’t invalidate the rape.

      But the fact is that she chose not to fight back and to let him take what he wanted, and because she was unwilling to fight back she somehow thinks other young women can’t either.

      • “Time slowed, I disassociated from my own body and could see the whole incident as it happened.” I was so disassociated that it affected the associated vision/line-of-sight of EVERYONE ELSE AT THE GAS STATION.

  10. She was already in her attacker’s physical control before the actual assault. The gun is beside the point. She could’ve had *any* other weapon in her purse and the situation would not be changed at all.

    Further, even if she had had her gun on her person, “Somehow, in spite of all my training, I knew I couldn’t take his life” … Well, that sentiment makes the presence of the gun, or any other weapon, even more beside the point.

    I hope most people reading that story will see the problems…

  11. Since when did “defense against rape” become the sole reason for college students to avail themselves of their natural, constitutionally protected right to bear arms?

    I reject this premise outright, and recognize that it is being used as a Straw Man by the other side. We need to stop letting them define the playing field.

    • Other than fun shooing paper, that probably is the main rational purpose, since college students don’t have 2 nickels to rub together, there cannot be much robbery. Other than profs, of course, and they campaign violently to be allowed to remain helpless. And molest female students who are unarmed.

    • Let them pick the terms… When we win, it’s all the more decisive.

      Home field advantage, and still got stomped.

  12. How does women giving up their guns arm them for the next Civil War, or War with China? How does it protect them (should they ever feel the need) from a secret and tyrannical government?

    Did she report the rape? Did he have to be “also a soldier” or could the story have been heinous enough without that. If he has a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, who helped with the pants? Did his “military” training school him up for that [I must have been cleaning the latrine in boot camp]?

    Sorry, I just noticed it was my time to leave.

  13. I have heard the “I couldn’t live with killing my attacker” line before. I have even asked that if I walked in on that event and I shot the perp would that be different. The answer was similarly, “No you can’t do that, because the attacker is just a misguided soul.” It’s as if being a victim is somehow a badge of honor. Not to mention shooting to stop someone is not the same as killing them. There is a correlation, but it’s not exactly set in stone.

    I actually doubt this woman was carrying at all.

    • “It’s as if being a victim is somehow a badge of honor.”

      Dovetails beautifully with what our legislators, police, district attorney’s and judges want us to be.

  14. Education? I’m a teacher who is VERY curious how many other teachers must have been absent that day in teacher college when they said “Don’t touch them or take pictures of them or sext them or party with them.” Harsher penalties? The death penalty is pretty harsh, but folks seem to be lining up for it, and the victim can’t get unraped no matter how harsh the punishment. A double tap to the chest and one to the head would certainly change an attacker’s focus. Don’t walk alone? Yep, but… MOST sexual assaults are carried out by acquaintances, including friends, lovers, and relatives. Stranger danger is largely a MYTH, as most female victims are raped by someone they said they loved. Good news is they bleed just as easily and are just as deserving of getting shot. ABC… ALWAYS BE CARRYING!

    • Be nice, now, I see no reason for multiple shots, here, I don’t think any guy can maintain wood with just one recent hole in him. For college use, you might even want to load a FMJ in the pipe over a mag of HP, so as to allow a “warning shot”, that being one through the belly and good luck to you, bud.

      • There are news accounts where the perp continued masturbating after being shot. One I read last week and one I just found in a quick search to get links for this reply. Probably drugs involved but it does happen.

  15. It happened to her therefore her one personal experience makes it true for everyone else. Projection at its finest.

    So if one woman did successfully defend her life w/ a gun does that mean everyone should have the right to do so?

      • It happened to her therefore her one personal experience makes it true for everyone else. Projection at its finest.”

        Her logic fails via the Hasty Generalization Logic Fallacy. She was unwilling to slay her “attacker”(and I doubt very much there was an attacker), therefore no is willing to use a firearm to slay an attacker.

        It’s the same thing you hear from an old fool, “Cigarettes don’t cause cancer! I smoked for fifty years and I haven’t died from cancer yet!”.

  16. This story wreaks of a leftist attempt to both cast doubt on the validity of carrying a weapon for self-defence and to portray our nation’s veterans negatively. The story’s nothing but hogwash. Holding a knife to her throat would have been enough to subdue her – begging the question as to the reason for the handgun. Besides, it’s not feasible to hold a gun in one hand and a knife in the other while attacking in such manner within the confines of an automobile.

  17. I’m sorry she was raped. That being said.
    “I knew the trauma caused by taking his life would be impossible to overcome.”

    Then why are you carrying a gun?

    Go get counseling and leave us alone.

  18. She got one thing right: “As I got out of the car, I could have shot him, easily.” And yet she didn’t, which is a good thing for her. If she had shot him, she would have been tried for capital murder without a self-defense defense.

    • Meh. If there’s that much physical evidence of a rape and he had a gun and knife in his hands, and no one looking, I’d tell my daughter to chance it and make them prove he wasn’t actively attacking her at the time. Anybody rapes my little girls deserves to be dead.

    • Could’ve taken a page out of the police playbook… “He made an aggressive move towards me with his weapon.”

      After all that happened, no one would have doubted it.

  19. It never happened like she says it happened.

    Either she didn’t have a gun in her purse, or just as likely was never raped OR had a gun in her purse.

    Another of a long list of the left’s made-up stories that are nothing but pure fiction. Duke Lacrosse, Towanna Brawley, Mattress girl, Rolling Stone’s “rape” case, the story of the spitting gun owner at the Indianapolis airport after the NRA convention, the endless stories of nooses and nasty notes and vandalism on college campuses to name a few. They are all discredited in the end.

    Maybe we should find her picture and print up some posters, emblazoned with “Pretty Little LIAR.”

    John

    • The question of penal deterrence has been studied, and continues to be studied, by criminologists. The deterrent effect of harsher penalties is so firmly established that John Lott discussed it at length in his book “More Guns, Less Crime.” It’s something that must be accounted for if you’re trying to correlate other factors with crime rates.

    • because, if, you know, guns are useful if you are not willing to use one, then guns are useless…and you shouldn’t have one. because…guns

  20. It is true that the woman who wrote this article should not own or carry a gun. If a person cannot see themselves ever shooting at someone, even to defend themselves, then owning or carrying a gun can be a very dangerous choice for them. More likely that other person will take it away and use it on them. However, just because that is her mindset, she does not have the right to take that option away from others that are not afraid to defend themselves. She has NO right to dictate her feelings and choices on others and support laws that do the same. Besides all that, her story makes very little sense. How could this guy have both a gun and a knife on her and do anything, even unzip his pants? Her story is B.S.. Probably made up to support her position on gun control laws.

  21. This story is so made up my eyes wanted to bleed. Not only is it an attack on gun owners and women, but the military as well. Leftists seek to subtly dishonor the military any chance they seek because they know it’s inherently a conservative bunch. Also, this woman is actually perpetuating a sexist stereotype should be ashamed of herself.

  22. Pathetic. A gun for show. Actually I really don’t believe her. My wife used to teach self-defense-lots of goofy white women can’t bring themselves to hurt the attacker. And none carried a gun which would indicate a slight willingness to shoot some lowlife. Duh…

  23. Why should I believe that she was raped?

    There was a time when I believed every rape story because I felt that women were unlikely to lie about being violated, and statistically I was right.

    Times have changed, and now without specific evidence of rape, I do not automatically believe a word of it.

    • “Times have changed, and now without specific evidence of rape, I do not automatically believe a word of it.”

      And that right there is the real crime.

      The women – men who actually were raped not being believed.

    • Statistically, you’re still right. But when it comes to stories like this, all bets are off, because the “truth in fiction” card is always on the table.

    • This plus a frickin’ million!

      “If we use proof in rape cases, we fall into the patterns of rape deniers.” -a quote from Emma Sulkowicz aka Mattress Girl

  24. I had a similar discussion that some to most of these assaults, are not nearly as violent as the one written about. And we should do all the other things.
    that’s true; but here’s the flip side: my handgun isn’t just to stop a rape. In Orlando (where I go to school) there have been several attempted school shootings, many robberies and assaults, and several murders in the surrounding apartments. Having a gun can protect me from other events, we loose sight in these discussions that while a .38 is louder than a rapewhistle it’s also a better way of keeping my blood in my body than begging for mercy.

  25. Anecdotes, emotion, and hasty generalizations. If not for those, the anti-gun side would have nothing.

    Guns are great self-defense tools, but they’re not perfect. This woman had one, and it didn’t help her in the least. But you know what else didn’t help? Education, harsh penalties for crime, staying in groups, or anything else. In fact, she thought she *was* in a group — with a “safe” friend.

    The same logic that prompted her anti-gun exhortation also yields the conclusion that no woman should have male friends (hello, burka!), all men are rapists in waiting (e.g., “rape culture”), and education only makes things worse.

    I’ll keep my gun, thanks. And I’m pretty sure my wife is going to keep carrying hers.

    • “Anecdotes, emotion, and hasty generalizations. If not for those, the anti-gun side would have nothing.”

      +1

  26. From TSRA email:

    “SB 11 by Sen. Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury)/Rep. Allen Fletcher (R-Tomball)-Campus Carry is still in Calendars Committee. Contact your State Rep.and Speaker Joe Straus on this bill, see links below. This important personal protection bill must move quickly.”

  27. Any discussion of options for dealing with criminal violence that includes tabling the self-defense option, right from the start, is a nonstarter with me.

    A premise that holds that no one has the right to defend themselves, implicitly holds that everyone has an obligation to be a victim. With that idea, they forfeit all moral authority even to participate in the discussion.

    I do not negotiate with violent offenders. Neither will I chat up their willing enablers.

  28. There has been enough debate on the voracity of her story so I won’t further comment on that. But it seems to me she was a victim far before her rape. She carried a gun yet was not of the correct mind to actually use it before something happened. I for one gave great thought to that topic before I decided to carry. My number 1 rule of carrying is that once the gun is unholstered, the decision to shoot is already made. And I have already come to the decision that if I have to unholster, I’m good with what follows. I read a lot about the PTSD issues of having taken a life. I for one don’t see the problem. When it comes to you or me and mine, I’m not going to lose any sleep over your bad choices. No, I’ve never dealt with it. But I’m not weak minded either.

    • Your’s was a pretty good comment, IMHO, until this last line:

      But I’m not weak minded either.

      What an insulting comment to all of those suffering from PTSD. Sure, resilience plays a role but, so does genetics and a complex combination of experiences. Your inference was that someone suffering from PTSD was “weak minded” and that is simply not necessarily the case.

      If I misunderstood that sentence or your intent in writing it, I’m “listening”.

  29. I doubt this story happened at all, but I do not believe at all that it happened as told.

    For starters, 90% of rapes are committed by an unarmed attacker. 3% are committed by an attacker wielding a knife , and 3% by one with a gun. So her attacker not only had a weapon, but two weapons? Extremely unlikely. Moreover, a majority of acquaintance rapists use only threats, not weapons.

    Sounds more like an inadvisable and immediately regretted encounter between consenting adults: one in a highly emotional state and the other too aggressive care. So now she reimagines the incident as rape and sparks it up with feaful and fanciful new details so as to absolve herself of any complicity.

  30. Not to blame her in any way, but by the time she knew she was in trouble, her attacker had her dead to rights with two weapons. When you are physically restrained and have a pistol inches from your temple, you can’t really fight back effectively. Sadly, that’s just life. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to prevent something from happening to you.

    The logical failure here is that she tries to generalize her particular situation as if it were / would be everybody’s situation. Not every attacker is a trusted friend who approaches you when you are most vulnerable. Not all of them are competent enough to restrain you before their intentions are known. Not every victim will be unable to get to their weapon in time. Her inability to defend herself in this particular situation says absolutely nothing about the effectiveness of being armed for the general population. Other peoples’ experiences are different, and we know that citizens defend themselves successfully all the time.

    From there, her account just becomes bizarre. Shooting somebody after an attack has ended is a different situation than shooting them to prevent the attack from occurring. She likely would have been in legal trouble if she had shot him afterward. She was traumatized and in a different state of mind after the attack. An imminent attack is an immediate threat, where as shooting him after the attack would be more cold blooded, and so more difficult to do (in my opinion). Again, she is over-applying her personal situation to the general case. Furthermore, she can never know if she would have been able to pull the trigger before the attack if she had the opportunity to deploy her weapon. For that matter, she can’t know if he would have stopped and run away when a gun was pointed at him. And so again, she fails to prove anything about the general case from her personal experience, not matter how tragic that experience is.

  31. “Let’s table the gun discussion and find other viable solutions…”

    So, lets talk about guns, but only in a context of getting rid of them, because this isn’t really a discussion at all…

    All you want to do is force others to comply with your demands by framing said discussion, from the outset, as only acceptable if it begins with your already-presented false conclusions…

    Get raped again… You had a gun and you didn’t use it. I have no pity for a woman who wants to see other women get raped just because she got raped. She failed to act. It’s her fault. Facts and reality are so mean and uncaring… Yup.

    Let us encourage other women to act to protect themselves, instead of fail to act as she did. Society is not to blame, nor can it help those who refuse/fail to help themselves.

  32. Situational Awareness. If you don’t have any, your gun probably won’t help. If you put yourself into an indefensible situation, it doesn’t matter if you have a false sense of feelings about hope and safety in your pocket, IWB, or in your purse… Make a target of yourself and eventually some dirty animalistic excuse for a human being is going to take advantage of it. Guns don’t make you bullet proof. They give you a fighting chance. So long as you’re not stupid enough to rob yourself of that chance…

    But more importantly, this story isn’t believable. Don’t buy it. Not even a little. Just another lie manufactured by an irresponsible gun hater.

  33. Typical Liberal drivel.

    She had a gun in her purse where it was hard to get at, she let the rapist get in contact with her, then she admits she could never actually use the gun she was carrying, and then claims it’s society’s problem to protect her.

    Typical Liberal drivel. Take no responsibility for your own life or well being, but instead, let the government take care of you.

    Sorry, not much sympathy here. Yup, if this is true, the guy is scum and most of us know exactly how we would have handled it if we had caught him in the act, but she is a typical perennial victim and with her attitude she always will be.

    And before anyone flames me as a “man” who doesn’t understand, my wife was coerced into sex as a teenager by a man she thought she could trust, but instead of whining about it and demanding society do something to protect her, she carries a gun and there is no doubt she will use it if she needs to.

  34. Anecdotal evidence given to invoke an emotional response. Empirical evidence requires logic and reasoning:

    “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

    Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. PP 15-16. Retrieved May 21, 2015, from http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18319/priorities-for-research-to-reduce-the-threat-of-firearm-related-violence

  35. Gosh what a load of crap.

    Her experience has absoluely no bearing on anyone else’s – past, present or future.

    What the attacker did to her was inexcusable. I hope he ‘found a friend’ in prison who could ‘treat him right’.

    However the response “education” and “harsher consequenses” are worse than useless; they are a false sense of security.

    Her inability to employ resources she had already made a concious decision to put at her disposal is her failure and an unfortunate consequence. Taking that resource away from others who might be able to act rather than react is reprehensable. Use of lethal force does not always lead to death but refraining from use and hoping for mercy in these situations always leads to assault.

    Hope is not a plan.

    Rapists gonna rape.

  36. Women Against Gun Violence is a somewhat odd group. They have been around since 1993 and like many other anti-gun groups like to say that they are not anti-gun. To their credit they are much more tolerant of dissenting views than a group like Everytown or MDA would be, but their attitude towards firearm safety is summed up almost in a sentence.

    It goes something like this (not an exact quote but close enough), “The safest thing is not to have a gun, but if you do keep it locked up.”

    Like many of us gun owners we can agree with that. Most of us do. Despite trying to get them to publically declare whether their lockup idea also includes your defensive arms for almost a month I never could get them to answer that. One can only assume that even your defensive arms should be locked up and separated from the ammunition.

    But their safety tenets deliberately ignore education. WAGV believes young children are incapable of learning anything about gun safety even if you use repetition. Of course, this flies in the face of common parental safety instruction about looking both ways when crossing a street and not running out into traffic. You would have to wonder if WAGV was teaching kids about crossing the street whether traffic fatalities for kids would go up.

    WAGV explains that teaching kids about gun safety makes the kids responsible for gun safety not the adult. That always mystified me too.

    While they really won’t attack the NRA directly, they refuse to acknowledge that maybe the organization’s mantra for youngest kids of Stop, Don’t Touch, Leave the Area, Tell a Grown Up might well save lives.

    The organization constantly posts memes about accidental shootings and teenage suicides involving firearms. They never post anything about the kids whose lives were saved by an armed parent(s) against home invaders. What is more they imply to women that a firearm is not a good way to protect themselves from an attacker.

    They also make the same mistakes about the NRA alleging the NRA is owned by the gun manufacturers. They fail to notice the donations from Hollywood in fund raisers open them to same type of association.

    It does have to be nice to have access to Hollywood artists and resources to help you produce your features. The true shame though is that they will not listen or learn about safety or firearms from the organization that wrote its first safety rules over 141 years ago, with 110,000 certified instructors that educated over 900,000 people last year alone.

  37. Table the discussion? I thought we desperately needed a “national conversation.” Oh, was that before your side began losing?

  38. Apart from all the other arguments posted here regarding her story, her solutions are stupid too.

    She’s basically suggesting that as long as we educate ourselves and others and create harsher sentences (prevention) that we don’t need guns to protect ourselves.

    That would be like saying we don’t need fire departments because we should just be preventing fires through education and better regulations regarding building codes.

    • Absolutely correct !

      But logic is lost on the mentally incompetent (and these people drive cars and vote). For the simple-minded, only how one “feels” is relevant.

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