Giving women guns wouldn't prevent rape – it would land women in jail
NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch says guns will protect vulnerable women. But a court system that already blames rape victims won’t be kind to those who kill their attackers
The NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch has told a lot of lies over the past 24 hours. Loesch, dispatched to counter the swell of young anger across the country, joined CNN’s town hall with Marjory Stoneman Douglas students on Wednesday night as part of the NRA’s post-Parkland damage-control tour. There, she lied to grieving students and parents about the NRA wanting expanded background checks (they oppose them) and insisted that “people who are crazy” should not be able to obtain guns despite the NRA’s opposition to gun bans on people with mental illnesses.
The most insidious lie of the evening, however, was Loesch’s insistence that armed women could better defend themselves from rape – a claim that’s not only easily disproven, but that serves a very specific purpose: the NRA wants us to believe that guns protect the most vulnerable among us, instead of realizing the truth – that they kill the most vulnerable.
Women are much more likely to be fatally hurt by a gun than saved by one. Women who live in abusive situations are considered at grave risk when a gun is in the home – no matter who owns it – and women killed by their partners are more likely to be murdered with a gun than all other weapons combined. (Loesch and the NRA know this, of course, yet have lobbied for years against measures that would keep guns out of abusers’ hands.)
This is especially important considering that the vast majority of sexual assaults aren’t committed by strangers lurking in bushes, but by acquaintances, friends, and even loved ones.
If a woman was raped and found not to be carrying a weapon, would we blame her for being foolish?
In addition to the overwhelming research that shows guns are more likely to kill than protect women, it’s also fairly clear what would happen if women did arm themselves against rapists and abusers.
If a woman were raped and found not to be carrying a weapon, would we blame her for being foolish in the same way culture does now when women are attacked at night, or after they’ve had a drink?
Over the last few months, we’ve seen the way women are treated when they dared to simply out the men who hurt them – does anyone really believe women shooting them would somehow go over better?
And at what point should a woman who fears being raped shoot her attacker? Should she pull the trigger when he ignores her first “no”? After he pushes her on to a bed? Or would a woman need to wait until penetration is literally about to occur to shoot, just to be sure?
Somehow I don’t have faith that a court system that continually fails and blames rape victims would be very kind to women who kill their attackers. In fact, women who have tried to protect themselves from sexual or domestic violence haven’t been lauded as second-amendment heroes – they’ve been arrested.
Marissa Alexander was sent to prison after firing just a warning shot at her abusive husband. Bresha Meadows was just 14 years old when she shot her father in an attempt to protect her family from him – she was charged with aggravated murder. In both cases, not a peep was heard from the NRA. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that neither Meadows or Alexander is white.
Guns have not and will not protect us. They won’t help women, they won’t help children. They kill us. Loesch and the NRA know this already; but their bottom line has long trumped the safety of the most vulnerable Americans.
In the words of my new hero, the shooting survivor Emma González: I call BS.
Jessica Valenti is a Guardian columnist
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