You have been warned.
I'm a male who identifies as a man. I'm a male man. I'm also the proud owner of three guns. I've been a 2A advocate for twenty years now. I used to be an NRA member, I'm now a USCCA member.
Over the course of twenty years of discussions about gun control, women always come up.
The difficult thing for me, as an advocate for the right to keep and bear arms, is to not come off as if I'm using women as a device to secure a right that I value. I don't wanna do that. And, by the way, if any woman is reading this, if you're in the Phoenix area, I will take you to the range and let you shoot my guns to see if it's something that appeals to you. I'll buy. I genuinely want women to be armed.
The difficult thing for my opponents, regarding women, is reality.
If it's true that we have a rape culture, and that one in four women in college campuses are victims of sexual assault, then women should have guns. The best rapist is a rapist with a large caliber bullet in his brain.
It's been grinding my gears for years that "Just teach men not to rape." is still a thing that people say. Yeah, it's an understandable response to the assholes who say that rape victims were "asking for it" because of how they dress, or some bullshit like that; but, it's an overcorrection. You don't tell anybody to not lock his or her door at night because we should just teach men not to steal or not to murder.
Guns are effective, defensive tools.
The reality is that the anti-gun lobby needs to keep women out of the equation, and shift the narrative as best they can. The reality is that every gun control law aimed at men also applies to women. If you're anti-gun, especially if you're a man, you have to deny the reality of the experience of a woman to support your cause.
The "teach men not to rape" meme is a dangerous one. So long as we're living in a world with conscious creatures, there will be bad actors. I didn't need Mr. Mackey to sit me down and say, "Rape is bad m'kay. You shouldn't rape, m'kay." to know that hurting another human being is bad. Rapists are bad people who deserve to be shot and killed by their would-be victims.
People on my side of the gun debate need to tread softly on this issue; but, we are treading too softly.
During the closing arguments of the Rittenhouse trial, one of the prosecutors actually said that we all have to take a beating. If it were Kyle's sister who shot Rosenbaum in the exact same scenario, the prosecutor wouldn't have dared to say that in open court. If it were Kyle's sister, there probably wouldn't have been a trial, nor charges filed. There's a reason for that -- women don't tend to solve altercations with their fists the way that men do.
When states pass laws which inhibit the right of a person to carry a gun on the metro, or in a park, or whatever the fuck New York City deems too precious, they're disarming women.
I want every would-be rapist to be a would-be rapist. Namely, I want them all dead before they commit the rape. I want a gun available to every woman. The anti-2A movement wants to sacrifice women at the altar of their ideology.