So I watched yesterday’s Senate hearing on gun safety (or as Wayne LaPierre would call it, Gun-Grabber-Palooza). I was pleased to see a woman on the panel of experts. Yes, Gayle Trotter is a gun rights advocate, but at least it was a break from the usual panel of white middle-aged men. I was looking forward to what she had to say.
Here’s a true thing: I generally expect women to be more reasonable than men. More practical, more thoughtful, more grounded in reality. I think that’s true much of the time. Not yesterday. Yesterday Gayle Trotter’s testimony was misleading at best; at worst it was irrational and — there’s no nice way to say this — stupid.
gayle trotter
Much of her testimony was an impassioned defense of assault-style weapons. She testified,
[W]omen are speaking out as to why AR-15 weapons are their weapon of choice. The guns are accurate. They have good handling. They’re light. They’re easy for women to hold. And most importantly, their appearance. An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon. And the peace of mind that a woman has as she’s facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home, with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened, violent criminals.
That’s her argument. A woman needs a scary-looking gun when she and her children are being attacked in their home by multiple hardened, violent criminals. Trotter even told the story of Sarah McKinley:
Home alone with her baby, she called 911 when two violent intruders began to break down her front door. The men wanted to force their way into her home so they could steal the prescription medication of her deceased husband, who had recently died of cancer. Before the police could arrive, while Ms. McKinley was on the line with the 911 operator, these violent intruders broke down her door. One of the men brandished a foot-long hunting knife. As the intruders forced their way into her home, Ms. McKinley fired her weapon, fatally wounding one of the violent attackers and causing the other to flee the scene.
That’s a sad and scary story. And it actually happened. But not quite in the way Trotter suggests. The fact is, Sarah McKinley didn’t use a scary-looking assault rifle to protect herself. She used a Remington 12 gauge shotgun — a weapon that wouldn’t be regulated under the new proposed gun control laws. Although Trotter didn’t actually state McKinley used an AR-15 to defend herself, she certainly suggested it. Her testimony was deliberately misleading.
But it was her irrational and stupid testimony that was, in my opinion, more deleterious. She argued that women need firearms to counter the superior strength and size of a male attacker. That sounds logical, doesn’t it. After all, men do tend to be bigger and stronger than women. Men do tend to be the aggressor in domestic disputes. So surely a woman having access to a firearm would make her less vulnerable. Right?
No. Not right. This is where being trained as a criminologist comes in handy. Here are some actual facts:
- Relatively few incidents of violence against women involve strangers; their attackers are almost always men with whom they are close: boyfriends, husbands, fathers, etc.
- Research shows men who batter women frequently use firearms to scare them, threatening to shoot them, or shoot their children, or shoot their pets. In other words, abusive situations often begin with men already holding a firearm.
- Most incidents of domestic violence occur under circumstances in which women are attempting to reduce the tension; they’re trying to avoid a fight. When somebody does reach for a weapon, it’s almost always the man.
- In the last wide-ranging study that looked at the use of firearms in domestic violence, the data revealed that for every instance in which a woman used a gun to successfully defend herself there were more than eighty instances in which a woman was murdered by her abuser.
By the way, that study was done in the late 1990s. It was the last such study because in 1996 NRA-supported Republican Members of Congress passed a law banning the use of federal funds for research that promoted gun control — and since any research that might suggest guns were a hazard could be interpreted as promoting gun control, all such federal research was halted.
Once you actually unpack Gayle Trotter’s argument that guns make women safer, once you look at real world data, it becomes clear her argument is…well, irrational and stupid. In her testimony, Trotter cites ‘research’ which she claims supports her argument. The work she cites is a book called More Guns, Less Crime, by John Lott. A panel of sixteen scholars under the aegis of the National Research Council examined the claims made by Lott; fifteen of them found his claims to be either invalid or unconvincing. It’s also worth noting that Lott, when his findings were criticized on several websites, used ‘sockpuppet identities’ to support his claims.
john lott
In other words, John Lott is perhaps not the most reliable of sources when it comes to firearm statistics.
Let me also say this: there ARE some valid and logical arguments that can be made against the suggested ban on assault-style weapons. It’s true some weapons that would be affected under the proposed ban are on the list for no other reason than because they’re scary-looking. But any valid arguments are undermined when gun rights advocates present testimony that is deliberately misleading or simply stupid.
gregfallis.com 
I wonder if anyone in Congress is currently considering legislation to repeal the research ban.
Also… the more I learn about the laws such as this that our so-called representatives pass for no other purpose than to mollycoddle industries that have virtually no redeeming values, the more sickened I get every time someone speaks of said representatives as public servants.
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One of the executive memoranda President Obama signed recently ordered the Department of Health to “conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it.”
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The last tme I used a friend’s automatic at the range it kept ejectng the hot brass into my cleavage so I’m sticking with my S&W Chief’s Special revolver but since it is kept locked separately from the ammo chances are I’m not going to shoot anyone with it.
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Chances are you’ll never have anybody break into your house while you’re home whether you have a firearm or not. Most burglaries take place in the daytime, when people are at work or school. BUT in the very unlikely event somebody did break into your home at night, you’ll either hear them do it (in which case you probably have time to fetch your gun) or you won’t (in which case it won’t matter what sort or how many guns you have).
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I would be willing to bet that most break-ins/burglaries don’t involve firearms other than those that homeowners have in their possession. I think that the need for firearms in such cases is extremely overstated, and that taking a person’s life for trespassing or intrusion is beyond ridiculous. However, it is the pistol-packing multi-miscreant scenario that (as illustrated by Trotter’s testimony) the NRA loves to trot out because it knows that its target (sigh!) audience is the Wild West gun-totin’, injun-hatin’ settlers of suburbia, hellbent on protecting their wide-screen TVs.
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Patrick, you’re right — most burglaries don’t involve firearms. Most burglars want to avoid a fuss; they just want to take some fungible goods to sell — and they tend to be oddly practical about it. They often know the difference between breaking and entering and burglary, and they know the difference between burglary and aggravated burglary (which involves a gun). So they avoid bringing guns with them. Some burglars avoid stealing guns, even though guns are very fungible, because if they get caught with a gun during a daytime B&E (even if they didn’t bring it) they’ll get charged with aggravated burglary and that pretty much guarantees a prison sentence.
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Once I became disabled I got rid of all my weapons even my taser. I’m not allowed to have the one which fires from afar. The only thing I carry now is pepper spray but that is mostly for protection against dogs in the street. I realized that any gun could easily be taken away from me and that means that an attacker would then have a better weapon to kill me.
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This may sound illogical, but the best defense a woman has against being attacked on the street is noise. Blowing a whistle or shouting is almost always enough to scare off a would-be attacker. But women are socialized to avoid embarrassing themselves, so they’re often reluctant to make a loud noise in case they’ve made a mistake. That’s not to say pepper spray in the eyes or mouth isn’t effective; it’s just better to make a fuss before somebody gets that close to you.
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In the UK and compared to the US, gun crime is almost unheard of. The reason is, guns are legally not in general circulation and those that are; are rightly subject to very strict and enforced gun controls. We’ve seen and heard all the contorted excuses that the gun lobby employ to justify more guns but they do not stack up under even the most elementary scrutiny and they know they don’t. But the old adage is that if you repeat a lie often enough people will begin to believe it.
This person who is the subject of your article has now put pen to paper and seems to suggest that Trump be awarded the Nobel Peace prize and uses the same contorted “logic” to further the Idea that Trump’s tenor as president, has enhanced world peace; despite evidence to the contrary and despite his incendiary twitter rhetoric on a daily basis. ludicrously furthering the implication that this is the formula for achieving world peace. She cites comparisons with Obama (who actually won the prize) but conveniently omitted all the other debacles that resulted in fracturing the peace like in northern Syria because his buddy Erdogan was twisting his arm and Russian bounties in Afghanistan. And that he threatened NK with annihilation because he seemingly got out of the wrong side of the bed. Yes that’s exactly the sort of “peaceful leadership” that the Nobel committee should be focusing on when dishing out awards (not). It’s also noteworthy that both Hitler and Mussolini were both nominated for the same award.
If he were to”win” (which he won’t) then it would come as no surprise that he would consider it as a great honor and compliment the process however, if he loses (which he will) he will then trash the process (which this person writing the article is preemptively doing) It comes as no surprise to me that the article comes from the same “credible”news source as all the other sycophantic outlets.
https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/thehill.com/opinion/national-security/517205-end-the-nobel-peace-prize-if-trump-doesnt-win-it?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#aoh=16006794833887&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fopinion%2Fnational-security%2F517205-end-the-nobel-peace-prize-if-trump-doesnt-win-it
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