10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down | Mother Jones
Myth #7: Guns make women safer.
Fact-check: In 2010, nearly 6 times more women were shot by husbands, boyfriends, and ex-partners than murdered by male strangers. A woman’s chances of being killed by her abuser increase more than 7 times if he has access to a gun.
Few things infuriate me more about this debate than the fact that “gun rights” advocates are appropriating very real concerns about violence against women to suggest that what would really solve that problem is more guns.
If conservatives cared about women’s physical safety, perhaps they wouldn’t be opposing the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Perhaps they would understand that there are limits to what carrying a gun and taking self-defense classes can do, and that eventually we need to stop demanding that women shield themselves with increasingly expensive, inconvenient, and restrictive measures from the problem that nobody seems to want to name: violent masculinity.
