http://web.utk.edu/~celena/index.html

Much has been said about how guns are detrimental to women, but is it
possible for them to be an empowering force? A National Rifle Association
program entitled “Refuse to Be a Victim” encourages women to stand up for
themselves and teaches them to avoid and handle dangerous situations. Ads
for the program include the blurb, “As a woman, you should know that three
out of four American women will fall victim to violent crime at some time in
their lives. But that doesn’t mean you have to be a statistic. You do have a
choice,” which sends the message that women can control their victimization.
Women reportedly have attended seminars such as this one all over the
country, as well as shooting range and self-defense classes. Gun
manufacturers have also indicated that gun ownership for women has more than
doubled since the 1980s (1), which calculates to about one in every six
women (2). Some women, at least, are finding good reasons for buying and
using guns.

“All the time I was locked in the truck, I could hear him yelling from the
driver’s seat about what he was going to do with me.” Kate Petit’s car
sputtered to a stop on the interstate highway between Lake Kissimmee and
Tampa, where she lives alone in a nicely groomed but older condominium
development on the established side of town.

“You know, I have never made that drive to the lake without worrying
somewhere along the way about the risk of having a flat tire or breaking
down and being stranded on the side of the road alone.”

Kate was stranded, all right. What looked to her like a mixture of smoke and
steam was pouring out the top, bottom, and sides of the engine compartment.
She knew it was safer to stay in the car with the windows and doors secured,
but sitting in a burning car, to her thinking, was by far the most dangerous
thing she could do, so she grabbed her purse and took up a position at the
side of the road at a conservative distance from the car’s gas tank.

“I didn’t know what to expect next. You just hear so many
stranded-women-on-the-highway stories that I became short of breath and
nervous as soon as the car took its final gasp and I pulled to a stop on the
shoulder of the road. Just being stopped on the highway after going sixty
miles an hour for the past half hour is unnerving enough, but with the car
burning and all those cars whizzing by shaking the ground, I just
hoped–well, maybe prayed–that a state highway-patrol car would pull up and
some yes-ma’am-type trooper would tell me not to worry and take me home.”

The car that stopped was not a highway-patrol, and Kate tried to reason with
herself that anyone stopping, short of an actual policeman, could be more of
a problem than her stalled car, but she knew she couldn’t stand there all
day. So she greeted the well-dressed, middle-aged good samaritan with
enthusiasm for his assistance, and grinned a big hello with an audible sigh
of relief.

“I had to size up the situation in a hurry,” said Kate. “Here was this
respectable-looking gentleman who stopped an expensive-looking car on the
highway and backed all the way up in front of me and my burning car. I
didn’t have much choice except to ask him for help.”

Kate was right. She had no choice. After being polite and sympathetic, the
man took a knife from the inside pocket of his suit coat and pressed it
sharply into Kat’s ribs, telling her if she didn’t cooperate he would push
the knife into her heart.

“He slit a tear in my blouse and I felt the knife cut me. I was absolutely
numb. All of a sudden there was no more traffic noise, or even a fear of
being stuck on the highway, or any concern for my car,” explained Kate. “I
was this man’s prisoner.”

Kate was ordered into the trunk of the man’s car. She had no choice. She got
into the trunk. The man drove with Kate in the trunk for what Kate guessed
to be a half-hour. The last few minutes were on an unpaved road; then the
car stopped and the engine was turned off. During the entire time, the man
yelled back obscenities to Kate in the trunk. She wouldn’t respond when he
demanded to know if she could hear him, so he yelled louder and got more
obscene. When the car stopped, Kate recalls vividly the sound of the key in
the trunk lock.

By the time she heard that sound, Kate had repositioned herself so that she
was lying on her back, her feet tucked up under her, and her knees pushing
hard against the inside of the license-plate wall. Kate’s head was jammed up
against the back seat, and she hoped the overhang wouldn’t obstruct a clear
view of him when he opened the trunk. She knew he would have his knife
out–that was the only thing she was really sure of.

Kate doesn’t remember when the man stopped yelling at her in the trunk, and
doesn’t remember what he said as he opened the trunk. All she remembers is
the flood of daylight momentarily blinding her when the trunk lid popped
open and an almost slow-motion sight of the bullet holes being made in the
man’s chest by the .38-caliber revolver she took out of her purse.

She had planned to shoot every bullet in her gun at the man when the trunk
opened, but after three shots he slumped into the trunk on top of her, dead.

“You know, I have carried that gun for years in my purse when I drive alone
or have to go into areas of town I think are unsafe. It’s funny, but all
those years I never really thought about actually shooting someone, much
less killing anyone. But I frequently recognized a feeling of being safe or
being less vulnerable when I had my gun with me. And when this horrible
thing happened, my only fear was about not having the opportunity to get to
it. You’re not going to believe this, but when he put me in the trunk with
my purse I was very relieved, ” Kate firmly said.

The police investigation revealed that the dead man was a twice-convicted
felon who had previously been found guilty of eleven counts of sexual
assault, including sodomy, child molestation, and rape. He had served prison
sentences in another state at various times for a number of convictions. At
the time he picked up Kate on the highway, he was out on parole for good
prison behavior after having served only twenty-two months for raping a
woman and her twelve-year-old daughter (3).

Critics of gun-usage might argue that these “success” stories of women who
have been able to use guns effectively are few and far between; in most
cases, women either cannot or do not defend themselves so easily. But those
who view guns as positive and enabling tools would argue right back that
victimization does not always have to be the case. At this point in time,
the argument goes, women have not been armed or trained to protect
themselves. Culturally, women are not encouraged to defend themselves, and
therefore there is a general unwillingness to do so. But what if women were
encouraged to become adept at using guns as a means of protection? Perhaps
we would not see the grim statistics that we see today.

An interesting side note to the debate is the fact that law enforcement does
not have any legal responsibility to protect the citizenry. In a landmark
case by the D.C. Supreme Court (Warren vs. District of Columbia), the court
ruled that, while police forces are responsible for the general welfare of
the people in their districts, they are not responsible for the individual
citizen (4). So if someone makes a 911 call and the police never show up,
the police cannot be held liable. Since women currently are targeted victims
of violence and the police are already incredibly overworked, perhaps women
should be taking more responsibility for their own safety instead of
depending upon men or a sometimes unreliable police force.

Many studies emphasize how guns are used negatively, but sometimes the
statistics are misleading. The anti-gun forces would have us believe that
accidental shootings and killings take place all the time, but in actuality
gun accidents represent a very small percentage of overall accidents in the
U.S. According to the National Safety Council, there are an average of 1,800
accidental gun-fatalities per year, and only 230 of those correspond to
“children” under the age of twenty (5). To put the number in perspective,
motor vehicle accidents hold the highest percentage of accidental deaths
with 47,900 per year. Accidental gun deaths lag behind falls (11,000),
drownings (5,600 per year), fires and burns (4,800), poison (4,000), and
suffocation (3,600). Additionally, gun accidents rank less (at 26,000 per
year) than emergency room accidents as a result of bicycles (574,000),
basketball (458,000), fishing (65,000), and playground equipment (53,000),
and two-thirds of gun-related emergency room visits do not require
hospitalization (6). Gun-related studies and statistics also tend to focus
more on accidents and deaths rather than crime prevention with guns. A
recent study demonstrated that firearms are used an average of 2.1 million
times per year to deter crime, and not one shot is fired (7).

All studies and statistics aside, those in the “empowerment” camp stand
behind one unmovable premise: Yes, there is too much gun violence against
women, but women should stop being victims and take responsibility for their
safety. Paxton Quigley, a female gun instructor and staunch supporter of
women using guns for protection (who, interestingly, used to be viciously
anti-gun), sums up the problem this way:

Women are fighting and winning rights equal to those that men have always
enjoyed, yet they do not have the same liberties. Many feminists contend
that the impact of potential victimization on women is linked to
perpetuating women’s lower status in society. Women think twice about
taking, or decline to take, jobs that may be better- paying because the
workplace may be located in an unsafe area. Women select housing first and
foremost for safety and then for comfort and fashion. They skip many evening
affairs, classes, or meetings for fear of coming home alone late at night.

We know that women are at a distinct disadvantage in a world that is
dominated by men–perhaps simply for the most obvious reasons. As young
girls, they don’t learn how to box or wrestle, nor do they play with toy
guns. They are not taught to defend themselves either in playground tussles
or through military training. On a more insidious level, socialization
processes that connect femininity to various styles of weakness and
helplessness may paralyze many women, teaching them the fear that restricts
their ability to defend themselves. And if women lack assertiveness and
self-confidence about their physical competence, they most certainly will be
easier prey for their attackers (8).

This “power feminism” is not too difficult to understand in the aftermath of
second-wave feminism; in the gender revolution, the notion that only men
protect is no longer valid (9). Steps to eradicate guns give way to an
alternative world, a world where women are again at the mercy of men. Guns
give women, whether they are physically fit or not, a fighting chance to
protect themselves (10).

Anti-gun proponents, who acknowledge the dilemma of violence against women
in relation to gun control, offer substitutes for guns in the face of an
attack. Unfortunately, though, these “alternatives” are unreliable
deterrents. Mace, which in the 1980s was the “deterrent of choice,” proved
to be not nearly as effective as it promised. For one, the mace that is sold
to the public has been diluted so much that sometimes it takes several
sprays to actually stop an attacker, and even then there is no guarantee
that the attacker will not grab the victim’s arm and aim the nozzle
backwards, since mace has to be sprayed at close range. Secondly, many times
the chemicals in mace will not affect someone who is drunk or has been
taking narcotics, which is the case with many attackers. Bobby pins and nail
files have also been extolled as “secret” weapons for women to gauge out
their attackers’ eyes or temporarily maim them. Again, the problem here is
that the woman must be in close range to succeed at such a stunt, and there
is always the danger of having the little weapon turned and used against the
victim. Stun guns and tasers are also “substitute” weapons for women, but
these also require the victims to be in close proximity to the attacker. The
stun gun needs at least three seconds to send an electric shock to the
attacker, and even then it has to be applied to a muscle group or nerve
center in order to function optimally. And tasers, which project a barb at
the assailant and deliver a shock, are wildly inaccurate and will not work
against someone who is wearing thick clothing. Knives also have been
recommended as a protective weapon. But really, unless a woman is a trained
knife-fighter, she will probably not have the quick reflexes and skill
needed to win a knife fight. Even if the woman did have the opportunity to
jab her attacker, it would take about twenty to thirty stabs to completely
stop him. Knife-armed resistors, consequently, are six times more likely to
be injured than gun-armed resistors. And lastly, methods such as karate,
judo, and jujitsu, while they serve as a great way to develop strength,
coordination, and discipline, are not successful means of self-defense. Most
people who rigorously train in the martial arts never actually hit or hurt
their opponents except by accident, and it takes years of practice and
training to be able to fight someone effectively even at a similar weight
and strength level (11). While all of these methods are great supplements to
using a gun during an attack, on their own they are unreliable and risky.
Guns are seen as a more efficient self-defense weapon because they do not
have to be used at close range, they can cause instant injury or fatality,
and the size and strength of the user is irrelevant.