Women in America are not sold on having their own gun; a fact the gun
manufacturers, lobbyists and puppets at the NRA want you to believe is false.
For years we’ve been fed bullsh*t studies from think tanks
belonging to the NRA that suggest otherwise. In 2013 the Christian Science Monitor reported that 15 percent of American
women owned a gun, up from 12 percent in 2007. The article says:
“The argument that women need guns for personal safety and home defense resonates with many women…”
It doesn’t really resonate witrh that many, though, does it? A.J. Somerset of Alternet offers an outstanding research piece about how many women actually own guns, the reasons
behind the number and the reality of the market created for women…by men.
Somerset writes:
NBC picked up the story and reported two days later on the evening news that women were suddenly buying guns not like crazy, but like even-crazier: according to Gallup only 13 percent of women owned guns in 2005, but by 2011, that number had grown to a remarkable 23 percent. For some reason, NBC had waited until 2013 to report a poll published two years before. Had they compared the 2011 Gallup numbers to other, more recent polls, they might have concluded that women were in fact selling guns like crazy, ownership having declined from 23 to just 12 percent between 2011 and 2013. Why the selective reporting? Several explanations present themselves, but let’s go with the obvious. You should never let mere facts stand in the way of a good story. And women with guns is always a good story.
Women with guns is a good story for sure. If you’re a man who
loves guns, it’s more than a story, it’s an entire culture and subset of the
economy.
Women who shoot guns are inherently more likely to do so because their
husband or boyfriend bought them one. They’re more likely to be long guns used
for hunting and target shooting than handguns for self defense.
Women in the woods with their hunter companions wear
form-fitting, aka less comfortable, camo gear with pink instead of orange.
Those women may fall into the category of women with guns, but
they don’t personify the typical American woman whose instincts tell them guns
are dangerous.
Void of the machismo required to compensate for penis size with
grains of powder or extended magazines, women simply just know better when it
comes to guns.
Somerset continues:
“Look at who pushes the story that more and more women are buying guns for self-defense—Smith & Wesson, for example, and the NRA—and you’ll find yourself a vested interest. Look who feeds the media all that anecdotal evidence: gun shop owners, range owners, self-defense instructors offering special classes for women only. Again and again, the American media takes dictation from a man with a marketing plan.”
Of course it’s all about the money. Isn’t everything when it
comes down to it? Women with guns is a narrative the right has pushed since the
1980s.
Men with guns need to see that women approve, so by giving perky blondes
with ponytails jobs as video instructors, salespeople and advocates you’ve
created something ammosexual men wanted for their women all along: The chance
to be gun buddies.
More power to the women who have decided to join the gun culture. At least they may actually think of the children in a
home when cleaning and storing their weapon rather than the fantasy bad guy
waiting in everyone’s bushes.
Author Charles Topher is a lifetime lefty liberal from
Lowell who has managed to migrate (legally) to the backwoods of Maine. He
writes from a 1 acre progressive bubble where Nobama stickers on pickemup truck
bumpers are common.
