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I’ve scheduled a post tomorrow on how to frame the argument that gun control advocates can’t win: guns stop rape. Ahead of that piece, I’d like to point out that the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex is up in arms about today’s quote of the day from Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore. Ms. Fiore said “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them.” Bilious billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s mob, Everytown for Gun Safety, sent out an email blast today claiming, “This grotesque display of opportunism is beyond the pale.” Irony: the bloody shirt-wavers in the gun grabbing biz don’t do it. Here’s the reasoning behind their claim that guns don’t stop rape. Well, most rape . . .

By saying that guns will prevent rape, they’re putting the burden on the victims. And they’re denying the indisputable fact that the vast majority of campus assaults are perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance — the types of people around whom people would never think to carry a gun.

Everytown is telling its peeps that arming women against rapists is a bad idea because it puts the “burden” on victims. (Note: people who wouldn’t be victims if they were armed.) The burden of…defending against rapists. You heard it here first. Everytown for Gun Safety considers self-defense a burden; not a responsibility or obligation (as it is in the Jewish tradition). A burden.

The implied corollary: the “burden” for not raping should be on the rapist. You know; not to not rape. I suppose that’s true enough. Well, not enough. Some. Anyway, good luck with getting potential rapists to lay off the rape thing without a gun pressed to their temple. Or at least the threat of same.

The second sentence is equally egregious.

Everytown’s is boldly asserting that armed women on campus wouldn’t think to carry a gun around a partner, friend or close acquaintance. To paraphrase the TV ad, that’s not how it works. You carry a gun against the possibility of an attack by anyone, anywhere, any time. If you consider a gun rape deterrence – as you should – who would be more deterred than someone who knows about the gun like . . . a partner, friend or close acquaintance.

But the real offense here is the phrase “the vast majority.”

By saying that “the vast majority of campus assaults are perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance,” Everytown is admitting that some rapes aren’t perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance. What about those rapes? Does Everytown believe that women raped by strangers don’t count? That we should ignore these crimes; indeed leave women defenseless against them?

This from the group that lobbies for gun control laws under the banner, “If it saves just one life….” Shame on them. On the positive side, the failed rhetoric creates an enormous opportunity for gun rights advocates to put these craven statists in their place. Read the recipe tomorrow.

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90 COMMENTS

  1. Everytown For Gun Safety: If it enables just one rapist.

    Brilliant slogan…..run with it.

    Seriously though, I have actually heard the following from an anti, here in Austin, recently (brace yourselves)…”If you are allowed to carry a gun on campus then there is nothing to stop the rapists from carrying them too.”

    You may resume drinking your beverage.

    • Actually I have been hearing that a lot lately. “They want to arm rapists?!” is one of the most common comments I’ve seen on these stories. Which makes me wonder if people in general just have trogloditic levels of reading comprehension or if they are intentionally trolling.

    • …….Maybe we should contact pro-gun celebrities and get them to do a YouTube video for “If it enables one rapist” or “If it makes one more person a victim” as a counter to the stupid “If it saves one life” videos done by anti-gun celebrities.

      • I think their logic may be that a rape makes one victim, attempted rape of someone with a gun makes 2, the attempted rape and the gun violence on the rapist.

    • Dear Everytown,

      Please cite one example of a sexual assault being perpetrated by an assailant with a fresh gunshot wound. I’ve been looking for such an example for years and I haven’t found one yet.

      XOXO,

      Rational People

    • Referring to the woman pictured above I can see why she’s not worried. In the immortal words of my favorite platoon sergeant, “I wouldn’t screw her with a borrowed dick.”

  3. Watts and her ilk are desperate. Again. Still.

    Campus carry is an opportunity to reduce sexual assault. If that makes promoting the idea a display of opportunism, so be it. Carpe diem.

  4. Game on!
    I can’t wait to listen to this debate.
    God bless Assemblywoman Michele Fiore choice of words “hot little girls”! The State-owned-media will be compelled to print these words in the same type-size newspapers reserve for “IT’S WAR!” or “PEACE!”. Google will have its hands full suppressing searches leading to gun-rights websites. They won’t be able to keep up.

    I don’t expect all women to apply for their CCPs. I can imagine many women starting to think about whether/or-not to admonish their friends for thinking about applying.

  5. Are they insane or just stoned? This is ridiculous. Everyone should be outraged over this. I know I sure am.

  6. Are they insane? Unless you’re a child or disabled person of course you should take the burden (or obligation) of self defense.

    Every rape victim is proof that the ‘bodyguards on speed dial’ system doesn’t work. Even if the victim manages to call the police before being attacked, it could easily take 15 minutes for a response car to arrive.

  7. I like all these people/groups who think they can train rapists not to rape or that educating rapists on the wrongness of rape will stop a rapist. Like “gee, I didnt know she didnt want to be raped” or “you mean people have feelings about stuff?”

    Even the hyper-reprogramming in A Clockwork Orange didn’t take so how is a tolerance class going to accomplish anything?

    We have a sexual harassment tolerance course here at work mandated every year. Before, during and after every year the same grounds employees, the same cops and firemen, the same city administrators all sit together making the same crude jokes about women, sex and rape. Fat lot of good it does. And the towns even been sued for it before!

    You can’t train a retarded moron to not act like a retarded moron.

    • “You can’t train a retarded moron to not act like a retarded moron.”

      I make those comments, too, and I’m pretty sure I’m more intelligent and accomplished than you are, you big prude.

    • “Even the hyper-reprogramming in A Clockwork Orange didn’t take”

      It did, in the last chapter of the book. I forget why exactly, but Kubrick did not include it in the movie.

      Still, I’m baffled by MDA’s stupidity and/or ignorance. What they’re advocating will either cost lives or at the very least leave people injured and traumatized.

    • Well said. It takes a special kid of stupid to think that rape can be prevented with education. Rapists know damn well that it’s not OK, they just don’t care.

        • Take it one step further in that they do not give a crap about any sort of laws or civilized behavior which is why gun control laws are ineffective because they ignore all laws to begin with.

    • It also doesn’t help they even consider just looking at a woman is sexual harassment, everything to them is sexual harassment.

  8. “By saying that guns will prevent rape, they’re putting the burden on the victims.”
    Should we rely on the good intentions of fire to not break out at inappropriate times and places? If that’s the case I guess I should take all my fire extinguishers to the next “extinguisher buy back.” Or I should stop buckling up my seat belt, because, really, it’s Mayhem’s fault if I get in a car wreck.

  9. By that logic seatbelts burden motorists who have to defend themselves against careless drivers. Fire extinguishers burden home owners who have to defend against arsonists. The fact that the back of your airplane seat can be used as a flotation device is a burden as well.

  10. -Throwing books will stop a school shooter.

    -Pissing yourself will stop a rapist.

    -Giving a mugger/burglar what they want will keep them from harming you.

    All methods are superior to 5 .38 caliber holes to the chest? I’ll believe that when me shit turns purple, and smells like rainbow sherbet.

    • Bloomberg is out to stop that, too — purple, rainbow-flavored slushies in sizes large enough to change the color and odor of your stool are banned.

      He’s thought of everything, that clever little man.

  11. How about letting women make their own decision on whether to carry or not instead of making the decision for them Everytown/MDA/”Big Gulp” Bloomberg?

    • If women are incapable of making the decision they can ask their fathers/brothers/boyfriends/husbands. It doesn’t necessarily take a legislature to make a woman’s decision for her.
      Conversely, it might empower women to make important decisions on their own. Could Women’s Liberation tolerate such an idea?

  12. I carry whenever I can, even around people I have no expectation will harm me. I can’t predict the future, so I don’t rely on my expectations to hold true. Life can be capricious that way.

  13. “By saying that guns will prevent rape, they’re putting the burden on the victims.”
    So…getting raped is the better option because there’s no burden attached? I’m deeply confused by this statement.

  17. Just by being a licensed carrier a female will project a certain competence, awareness and willingness to stay in control of her own well being.

    That alone would keep a “a partner, friend or close acquaintance” from trying to take advantage of her, and make it much harder for them to attempt a sexual assault if for no other reason than her heightened sense of situational awareness, and sobriety.

  19. I think it’s insane that “stop rape” campaigns are universally focused on the strategy of “asking rapists to stop raping”. I get it, if you can educate every last rapist in the world there would be no more rape. But this strategy is nuts, because you are spending your finite energy trying to empower the most unreasonable party in the arrangement (the rapist). And while everyone waits around for these rapist animals to learn to wear clothes and act like humans, people are still being victimized. It’s like the anti-rape campaigns actually REVERE rapists, like only these men have the power to stop rape. We shouldn’t give two craps about educating these animals, if we are going to put energy into a PSA let’s empower women to defend themselves and put these guys in hospitals, jails, or morgues.

    But no! Suggesting a woman could elect to do something to defend herself from an attacker is too much like blaming the victim! God forbid a university recommends to their students to carry pepper spray, that’ll acknowledge the reality that their world isn’t 100% safe, that won’t look good for PR! It’s easier to bury your campus rape stats than it would be to explain a self-defense incident on the evening news! If a student was to spray a dude then the dude’s lawyers might say it was a misunderstanding and that the university condoned it and go after their wallets!

    Bull. Rapists exist, and yeah it sucks that women should even have to THINK about it. It sucks that the fact these people exist necessitates thinking and enacting a kind of survival strategy for avoiding them, yes it shouldn’t be that way but it is. We’ll get a lot farther using practical strategies to mitigate the negative consequences of this reality than trying to reject the reality in hopes that you’ll teach every last animal to dance on his hind legs.

  20. Maybe Bloomberg and Watts could subsidize a team of armed bodyguards for every woman in America, just like the ones that both of them feel the need to have. I guess that’s the only option, as it just wouldn’t be right to burden anyone with the ability to defend themselves (and not become a victim in the first place). Well, that and a pipe dream fantasyland where rapists stop raping, murderers stop murdering and world peace is achieved.

  21. The entire campus rape thing has been exposed as feminist witch hunt. In fact the Justice Department has released data showing that rape happens less frequently on college campuses than in general population.

    What the feminazis call rape can’t be rape because if it were rape the police would be handling the investigation not the Dean of Students.

    • tdiinva,

      I wouldn’t be so sure. Colleges and Universities have two ginormous incentives to cover-up sexual assaults. First of all, if their institution has a lot of sexual assaults on record, prospective customers (students) will conclude that their university is unsafe and take their dollars to a safer institution. So will donors. Second, academia doesn’t want the world to know that bad things happen within their utopia. In other words sexual assaults expose their lie and they don’t want that … plus it would undermine their “credibility” on many other lies as well.

      • Not true. A real rape goes to the police. It’s called obstruction of justice if the University interferes by attempting to usurp the legal process.

        See UVA and Duke LaCrosse cases.

        • So university staff members never “warn” rape victims that their lives will be turned upside-down in the ensuing “mess” of sorting out a rape allegation? No warnings that the accused will sue the rape victim for libel, slander, or defamation of character? No warnings that the public will assume the rape victim was a slut and treat her as such in the future? No warnings that the rape victim’s boyfriend or future boyfriends will forever see her as defiled and dump her? No warnings that rehashing the event in court will be emotionally devastating and that the victim would be better off to get this behind her and start healing immediately?

          Unfortunately, there is actually some truth to these possible consequences of going forward with a rape allegation. University staff can simply promote these “warnings” under the guise of “full disclosure for the victim’s sole benefit” when their real objective is to convince the victim to drop the case. They could even “sweeten the deal” and offer to pay for therapy and tuition for the next semester. And the whole thing would be defensible.

        • I agree with both of you. There is a solution, tho, shoot the rapist and walk away, keeping your mouth shut.

        • tdiinva,

          I am not aware of universities hyping the rape threat — quite the contrary I have always heard them poo-pooing the rape threat.

        • Bull. These college administrators will try to cover up and down play as much as possible any crime on their campus and any near it. A lot of these campuses have more dark events taking place than what the administrators and faculty will ever lead onto the student body and their parents.

        • Well, those little blue flashing emergency lights sprinkled about the gun free campus will save all the little college students from the big bad criminals and keep everyone at least feeling safe.

        • #uncommon_sense:

          What would you call universities claiming that 1 out 4 women are sexually assaulted on campus? A cover up?

    • Indeed. It is undeniably a problem (mostly in that universities have a long history if massive cover-ups), but you are correct about it being a feminist witch hunt. The “1 in four college women will be raped” is an asinine statistic that they only got by broadening the definition of rape to an absurd degree, AND by cherry picking the data from a survey that was too small to adequetely represent the country. It’s a perfect example of the preferred tactic of feminism: repeat the same lie often enough until people accept it as being true.

  22. And THIS is why we are winning. We have the facts and reality on our side. There is no getting around it: a rapist will have a much more difficult time raping an armed woman than an unarmed woman. And gun grabbers still went on the offensive: they tried to induce an emotional response with the loaded words “put a burden on women”. Their only play is trying to induce a negative association in people’s minds between being armed and being a burden — and it is a false association at that.

    This is OUR golden opportunity. We have to seriously capitalize on this. We have to frame the debate! We have to tell women that they have two choices:
    (1) Take control of your life and have the power to defend it.
    — or —
    (2) Accept the burden and humiliation of being a sex toy for men.

    See what I did there? Not only did I frame the debate, I used words with positive connotations for our position and words with negative connotations for the gun grabber position. This isn’t rocket science people!

  24. “By saying that guns will prevent rape, they’re putting the burden on the victims…”

    No, we are putting the responsiblity of self protection on the victum. We want to remove the only real burden here, and that’s the restrictions put on being legally armed.

  25. what this idiot is trying to imply with the “burden” comments is that it should be the governments job to be burdened with your safety. because we all know how efficient the American Government is and how deeply concerned it is with all of our safeties.

    • As evidence, all the mental patients released by our humane governments and now left to die in the gutter in all cities near you.

  26. Guess what brings security, cops, & scrutiny more than screaming rape, fire, help, rape whistle, alarm, cell phone, etc. ? Discharging a firearm. Brings more attention than any other single device. It’s faster than dialing 9-1-1. Heck, you don’t even have to hit your target – though it helps.

    Power gets more attention than weakness; a potential threat is of more importance (to most) than a chance to help. Appeal to mans’ baser instincts – it works for politicians 🙂

  27. “By saying that “the vast majority of campus assaults are perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance,” Everytown is admitting that some rapes aren’t perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance. What about those rapes?”

    This is another example of just how bloody minded gun control ideology actually is. As with spree-killing, gun controllers tacitly assume that there should be no active deterrence crimes of aggression like rape. Gun controllers accept rape as a natural component of the social framework, something that can only be resolved by changing its root causes, etc., etc.. . . That’s pretty thin gruel for a woman traversing a darkened parking lot who might be a lot more comfortable knowing she has the right to arm herself for self-defense. The reality of her situation is the guy hiding in the corner and not a nuanced understanding of the “root causes” of rape.

  28. “The implied corollary: the “burden” for not raping should be on the rapist. You know; not to not rape. “

    They’ve been saying exactly this for YEARS. In fact, I posted this link just this morning in the QOTD comments:

    http://www.scarleteen.com/blog/heather_corinna/2009/12/15/10_surefire_ways_to_prevent_sexual_assault

    That list (or one similar) was originally published years ago on a University of North Carolina feminist page announcing one of their “24 Hour Rape Free Zones” awareness events.

  31. My wife was 18 and a freshman in nursing school when a series of student rapes (Including one at 11 AM on a front porch in downtown Richmond, VA) led to the chief of police addressing her class and recommending to them that they carry guns in their purses. His personnel were briefed and would not give them trouble. I promptly supplied the .25 Beretta, and she carried everyday, all through 4 years of school, 1965-1969. The rapes mysteriously stopped when a man was found in a local park, dead, with a hatpin through the brain. But she kept carrying, still does. You take care of yourself.

    • Every woman I’ve ever talked to about it has had one of those darkened parking-lot “moments of truth” . At my school we had a guy who preyed on women faculty and students for years. He was very cagey and hard to catch, usually staying just under of the official radar so the admin could deny there was a problem. Still there were several assaults and it was clear that this guy was very carefully scoping out our school’s abundant vulnerabilities. The campus cops finally caught him when he’d hidden in a remote women’s bathroom and attacked a 12 year-old girl who had come to class with her mom. Gun controllers never want to admit just how dangerous schools are for women. But they are.

      • So true. Schools in general are perv magnets. There are lots of women, they’re all disarmed, and there’s very poor security. I’ve come to hate academics for the way they deliberately put women and children in danger.

  33. Did I miss something here? What exactly were you trying to point out by referring to Jewish tradition? That Jews also feel it’s a burden to defend themselves? How does that have anything to do with this topic? If I misunderstood, my apologies, please clarify.

    • I believe he meant quite the opposite, and that Jewish tradition holds defense of self and others as an obligation.

      “Haba lehorgecha, hashkem l’horgo” — “Someone who comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”

      Note: I am not Jewish, just Googlish.

  34. There actually is a good argument against the carrying of guns specifically for the purpose of stopping rape: Most rapes occur while the victim is unconscious. That’s not to say that guns can’t stop rape ever (I believe that they can and that students should be allowed to carry a gun), but this is not the best method of stopping rape. Of course, they have to bring up the bullshit argument that we’re “blaming the victim.” They can’t use logic or reason, so they have to resort to straw men.

    http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/20/guns-wont-stop-campus-rape-say-people-mi

  35. What does work? Peeing on the attacker? Campus police? I guess they may as well shut down campus police and restrooms.

  37. “Everytown and Moms Demand Action have been challenged for falsely inflating the number of school shootings since Sandy Hook, and who can forget the gun control bus tour funded by Bloomberg that included the names of criminals and a suspected terrorist as victims of gun violence? …” SAF’s Alan Gottlieb

    about Bloomberg caught lying about gun dealers selling illegally, and being sued after:

    http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/01/johannes-paulsen/everytown-gun-safety-admits-misrepresented-facts-lawsuit-pending/

  38. “By saying that guns will prevent rape, they’re putting the burden on the victims. And they’re denying the indisputable fact that the vast majority of campus assaults are perpetrated by a partner, friend, or close acquaintance — the types of people around whom people would never think to carry a gun.”

    Those are exactly the people I try to ensure I am carrying around. So if the unthinkable happens, I can try to protect those I am closest to.

  39. “Places the burden of preventing rape on the victim”?

    How about this instead? Gives women the power to defend themselves against rapists.

  40. Newsflash: No one chooses if they want to be a target (or victim) of a crime. The time and place of a crime is dictated by the criminal or aggressor. What the target/victim can control is having the means to overcome and survive an attack or crime that is being committed on their person. Having a defensive firearm on your person increases the chances and opportunity of success or escape by a very wide margin. Just look at all the successful DGUs we have in this country. Compare those to the DGUs the police have. You’ll note the results of citizens are usually quite a bit better because in most cases we have the element of surprise on our side (we aren’t wearing uniforms, have more time for training, etc.).

    Personal safety and self defense are the very same reasons police officers and the military carry firearms on their persons. It is not because we want to harm others, it’s so we can survive and overcome attacks from those that would wish to do us harm.

    Everytown doesn’t understand evil exists in the world and they need to be educated on this fact. Currently, they don’t know the wolves from the sheep. They are literally afraid of anyone with a firearm, though ironically they are fine with the police. Which is odd since statistics show armed citizens are much more efficient and safer with their firearms than the police…

    This hypocrisy coming from the same group where their figurehead Shannon Watts has armed guards. So since they took that step to provide “safety” for their figurehead, it makes sense that the message they are sending is for everyone should have armed guards if they want protection from “bad guys”.

    Self defense is an individual responsibility and natural right — it’s not something any person or group should be able to dictiate for someone else. That is the height of self-importance and disrespectful.

  41. Feminist position on rape is that we need to teach all men, worldwide, not to rape women.

    Because of course that is so much easier than just empowering each individual woman to protect herself.

    • My wife’s cousin is one of those “teach men not to rape” feminists. She is also rabidly anti-gun. She recently posted some anti-gun diatribe on FB about how guns kill women or some such nonsense that is typical of irrational people. My wife replied under her post, “Why don’t we just teach people guns not to kill women?” She’s been silent on both issues for about two weeks now. =)

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