A GIRL’S GUIDE TO GUNS
Date: Jan 6, 2006 9:09 PM
John Lott. FYI (copy below):
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/NYPostRevPaxtonBook.html

Published Sunday, January 1, 2006, in New York Post

A GIRL’S GUIDE TO GUNS

By John R. Lott, Jr.*

WHAT should a woman do when attacked by a criminal? Should
she behave passively? Use pepper spray? A gun?

Most people hope they’ll get lucky and never be attacked.
For those who want to think ahead, there is Paxton Quigley’s
new book, “Stayin’ Alive.”

It turns out that pepper spray may not do you a lot of good
when it is raining or snowing. A woman is just as likely to
disable herself as the attacker when it’s windy or when
using the spray indoors.

Knives and baseball bats are particularly problematic,
because women have to get very close to their attackers to
use them, and male criminals ? that is, most criminals ?
tend to be much stronger physically than their female
victims. When it comes to physical contact, women generally
lose those fights.

The advantage of a gun is that it is ideal for keeping the
criminal far away from the victim. And the victim isn’t
responsible for restraining the criminal, as police officers
are when arresting suspects. A woman simply wants to keep
the criminal away from her.

There have been a lot of good books lately exploding the
myth that guns endanger people’s safety. (And at least one
very notable movie, Larry Elder’s “Michael & Me,”
devastatingly tackles many of the false claims in Michael
Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine.”) Quigley’s book covers a
lot of ground, such as the myths about personal defense,
when it is appropriate to use lethal force, whether there
are any risks to firing a gun while pregnant (apparently
not), how often children are killed by accidental gun shots
(very rarely) and how one goes about choosing the best gun
for a particular individual’s needs. The book answers these
questions from a woman’s perspective.

What works defensively for men doesn’t always work for
women. As Quigley points out, women who used a gun to
resist an attack were 2.5 times more likely to escape
uninjured than those who behaved passively. Guns aren’t as
beneficial for men. They are only 1.4 times more likely to
escape uninjured than those who behaved passively.

The book includes real-life examples of defensive gun use
and offers academic research on the millions of times each
year that people use guns defensively. These good-news
stories help Quigley illustrate how women actually react in
life-threatening situations. And she also does well
explaining what women should know before choosing a gun.

The book could have gone further debunking common
misperceptions about guns. Take the claim that “you’re more
likely to shoot yourself or a family member than kill an
attacker.” This study assumed that whenever anyone in a
gun-owning home was killed by a gun, it was that gun that
caused the harm. But academics have found that at least 86
percent of the time, that assumption was wrong ? and most of
other cases were suicides.

While recent polls show that more households own guns after
9/11, there is still a lot of fear and uncertainty about
guns, which may keep people from doing what is best for
their family’s safety. Quigley’s book cuts through a lot of
that unjustified fear.

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Bias Against
Guns.”