Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:17:04 -0400
From: "Mike Riddle" <[REDACTED] at [gonix.gonix.com]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[n--b--n] at [mainstream.net]>
Subject: Royko: Arm Women!

[I'm intrigued that I haven't seen this mentioned here before--did I miss 
it?  Or did the 'mainstream media' ignore it?]

                       WOMEN SHOULD GUN FOR EQUALITY

                               by Mike Royko
                     (c) 1996 Tribune Media Services
                           Posted as Fair Use

Chicago--One of the livelier debates on guns has recently been
touched off by Laura Ingraham, a Washington lawyer and
conservative essayist.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Ingraham expressed
happiness that women are "the fastest growing segment of the gun-
buying public."

She sneered at feminist groups that hold workshops "about how
rape is really about dominance, not sex," and suggested that
bullets are far more effective than workshops.

"If feminists are serious about ending what they see as the
subjugation of women," she wrote, "they will shelve their
political agendas long enough to recognize that women who choose
to become responsible gun owners are, in their own way, feminist
trailblazers."

This brought immediate ridicule from anti-gun advocates.

One woman hooted: "Yahoo!  I am woman, I am free!   Free to shoot
just like the boys.  What empowerment, what exultation, oh joy,
oh rapture.  By God, is this a great country or what?"

Another woman wrote: "Women interested in fighting violent crime
against women have to arm themselves, all right.  Not with
bullets, with self-esteem....  This is domestic crime.  In the
home.  By someone you know or love."

At one time, my left knee might have jerked and I would have
agreed with the dissenters.  That was when I thought that
reasonable gun control laws would reduce violent crime.

But I've since noticed something that should be fairly obvious. 
With all the gun laws we have, the bad guys still have guns and
use them to shoot the good guys.

Does that mean that the solution is for the good guys to all
start packing guns?

Probably not, because most people have no need to carry a gun,
and don't want to.  If everyone carried a gun, I'm sure crime
would be reduced.  We'd also have a huge increase in people
shooting off their own toes.

But women and guns?  I agree with Ms. Ingraham.  If every woman
in every big, high-crime community in America had a gun in her
purse or strapped to her thigh, we would have a safer, more
courteous society.

Let us look at the obvious.  Women are physically weaker.  They
are less violent, less boastful, less inclined toward beating
upon someone smaller.

If you go into a tavern, who is sitting there scowling and
looking to pick a fight?  What kind of people jump out of cars
and beat each other with tire irons over a traffic insult?

Women?  Of course not.  While we men have our good qualities,
we're responsible for most of the violence and boorish behavior
in our society.

So if we're going to trust anyone to pack heaters, it should be
women, who have proven themselves less likely to do something
goofy.

Yes, they do have this need for defense.  Imagine, if you will,
that men were society's prime rape targets.  Imagine a society in
which a small and mild-mannered man could not get off a bus at
night and walk down a dark city street toward his home without
fearing that he would encounter a large hulk with a knife who
would make unseemly demands.

Well, I'll tell you what the result would be.  Men would not ask
for workshops and self-esteem counselling or wear rape-whistles
around their necks.  They would demand the right to protect
themselves.  Politicians would promptly respond, and it would
soon be legal to pack a mini-cannon in our belts.

Consider the silliness of one of the women who criticized Ms.
Ingraham's views:

     "Only a small percentage of violent crimes against women are
committed by strangers."

Maybe.  But more than half the people in our society--about 140
million--are females.  So what is a small percentage?  One
percent?  That's still 1.4 million.  Percentages are piffle.

To a woman who awakens to see a stranger crawling through her
window and heading toward her bed, he is not a small percentage. 
He is a 100 percent fiend. 

But if she had a pistol under her pillow and knew how to use it,
she could make him a 100 percent corpse.

And the world would be a far better place.

(This column appeared in the Omaha World-Herald on June 6, 1996.)