WOMEN AND GUNS
American women are often taught to rely on emergency 911 police responses in the event of physical aggression. Unfortunately, more than 95 percent of 911 calls cannot be dispatched to police in time to stop a crime or arrest a suspect.

This sad statistic is unlikely to improve significantly in the near future because almost every state has ruled that police have no legal obligation to protect citizens from crime.

The slowness of 911 emergency response — and the ineffectiveness of restraining orders issued by today?s courts — suggests that self-defense may be a better option, according to attorneys Richard Stevens, Hugo Teufel and Matthew Biscan.

?A woman with a firearm…can credibly threaten and deter an attacker of any size, shape, or strength,? they write in THE WOMEN?S QUARTERLY. ?Even though weaker and unskilled in the use of firearms, she can sometimes protect herself with a sidearm without firing a shot. In more than 92 percent of defensive gun uses, the defender succeeds by firing only a warning shot or never firing the gun at all.? (The article is excerpted from their chapter in the Independent Institute book LIBERTY FOR WOMEN: Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Wendy McElroy.)

The above may help explain why, in recent years, women have reportedly purchased firearms and enrolled in gun-safety classes in record numbers.

Stevens, Teufel and Biscan conclude: ?Individual women in peril quite frequently fare better when they develop skill and confidence in the carrying and using of defensive firearms. Victim disarmament (?gun control?) laws that discourage women from developing the skills and using defensive firearms actually heighten the risks of criminal violence that women face. Such laws place women at a disadvantage against violent men and run against the feminist goal of equal treatment under the law.?

See ?Disarming Women,? by Richard W. Stevens, Hugo Teufel III, and Matthew Y. Biscan (THE WOMEN?S QUARTERLY, Summer 2002)

http://www.iwf.org/pubs/twq/Summer2002l.shtml

A longer version of this article appears in LIBERTY FOR WOMEN: Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Wendy McElroy.

http://www.independent.org/books/brief_liberty_for_women.html

Click here to order LIBERTY FOR WOMEN: Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Wendy McElroy.

http://www.independent.org/books/brief_liberty_for_women.html