“Having a gun isn’t enough. Women who fear for their life don’t need a gun — they need to go to their local police department, they need to go a family member, they need to go to the domestic violence shelter in their area where they have some type of protection.” – Christy Martin, Domestic Violence Survivor Explains Why Guns Don’t Actually Protect Women: ‘I Was Shot With My Own Gun’ [at thinkprogress.org]
Can you live at your local police station? Because mine closes at 5:00pm. All I can say is Stupid.
There is a reason why we say a restraining order is just a piece of paper. People should not have to go through their lives in fear, hiding in police stations and shelters.
So you’re tellin me a woman should give up her home personal property and privacy to live in a cramped shelter?? What planet is this girl from and how many times was she punched in the head that the above statement made sense??
If you have a police station or domestic violence shelter in your own home, I guess you’re ok…
The likely reason Ms. Martin was shot with her own gun was because she was not properly trained in its use. If she walked into her local gun shop, bought a gun, stuck it in her purse or pocket, and then waited until she was attacked before trying to figure out how to deploy and retain the weapon, its not surprising she got shot with it.
I know nothing about boxing. If I climbed into a ring with Ms. Martin, she would wipe the deck with me. If I wanted even a snowball’s chance in hell at surviving a boxing match with Ms. Martin, I would need training. Even with training, she would still probably kick my ass all over the place, but then again, she’s a professional level fighter, but that’s another matter.
Point is that you need training to effectively bring a gun into the fight. Training is not standing at a static line and shooting down range at non-moving targets. Training is learning how to dynamically deploy and retain your weapon.
Ms. Martin is about as much an expert in the effective use of firearms as I am a boxing coach.
Training is more than standing and shooting at static targets. It is also more than running around shooting at dynamic targets. Self-defense training encompasses surveillance/courntersurveillance training, understanding your legal environment, threat avoidance and practical tactics for the private citizen.. The wrong training can actually be worse than no training because you end developing habits that put you in physical and legal jeopardy. The armed citizen needs to understand the “Four Ds” — Deny, Disrupt, Dissuade and Defend. A surprisingly high percentage of civilian DGUs involve relatively static targets. The entire purpose of the Four Ds is to first avoid, then increase your decision advantage and finally make him run away before you have to pull the trigger. Each move is designed to reduce his options and mobility thus turning him into a static target.
Looks to me like Ms “boxer” has been hit in brainpan too many times. Or perhaps is just a dem wackobird/tool. SI needs to stick to supermodels on the beach and drop the political agenda.
Back in the early 2000s I remember people saying something like “Those who would give up their liberty for security are worthy of neither.” I guess that’s only true when a Republican president is fighting a foreign enemy.
“If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you: and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Sam Adams, in a speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776:
Huzzah!
I think this also applies to post modern diversibable, or moral equivalence, or whatever you call it. I call it “unilateral moral disarmament.” If you are so interested in diversity, and not hurting feelings, that you no longer attempt to discriminate between good and evil, then you have made yourself worthless.
I remember reading about a jury poll which, among other things, concluded that a woman who used a firearm in self defense was judged more harshly then men with the same exact weapon.
Our culture, like it or not, has this obsolete notion that a woman should surrender or seek help when faced with violence.What she should NOT do ,according to that bankrupt social norm, is fight back .That’s not what proper ladies do.
We need to defeat that obsolete and incorrect attitude as a civilized society.
Huh. That sounds downright sexist. The feminist should be, well, up in arms about that kind of thing. So to speak.
Gideon?
Weird, I would have assumed the total opposite. Women are rarely sterotyped as being ‘out for a fight’ (like zimmerman) so I would appear their intentions are more noble and they really had no other options.
That’s not exactly right. The Force Institute tested this idea with several mock jury trials. The did give women harsher sentences compared to men only if they had no firearms training. Women who had training were given lighter sentences than men. It was a great study.
“Before the attack, Lusk and others testified at trial, James Martin had controlled his wife’s life for years with drugs and threats to harm her or expose her sexuality to family and the professional boxing community.
Echoing that testimony on Tuesday, Lusk told Senior Judge Emerson Thompson Jr., “She had become hopeless. She knew she was sure to die by his hand or her own.”
Lusk said Christy Martin, who now goes by her maiden name Salters, still often has nightmares about the brutal attack, “screaming out, ‘He’s killing me! He’s killing me!” The boxer testified that James Martin “threatened my life for over 20 years.”
“He repeatedly told me that if I ever left him, he would kill me,” Christy Martin said. “He would say he didn’t have much longer to live anyway.””
She’s right that owning a gun isn’t enough. Guns aren’t magic. You also have to have enough sense and personal responsibility not to stay in an obviously dangerous situation.
Ah, there was the context I was looking for. I didn’t want to make a judgment based simply on that quote, and I hasn’t made it to the actual article yet.
I agree completely. This wasn’t a case of “bought a gun one day and got shot with it later that week,” this was an ongoing, long-term situation.
I’m beginning to wonder if DV gun incidents shouldn’t be treated like suicide gun incidents more than anything else. Not in every instance to be sure, but you frequently have a situation where people are divorced from reality to some extent, and not willing to do what is necessary to protect themselves – over a long period of time. It doesn’t line up with the “normal” self-defense situation – there is an immediate threat to my life that I must deal with now. Does anyone know if there have been any studies done of DV that show – as they seem to with suicides – that the absence or presence of any particular weapon doesn’t affect the outcome?
The fact the “progressives” are so willing to conflate someone with mental dependancy and self-worth issues with someone simply trying to protect themselves against a rapist – and throw the latter under the bus – is pretty vile and frankly puzzling.
I guess she decided to ignore the many instances where a woman successfully defended herself against an attacker because she had a gun.
In her own mind, she already failed to protect herself and was dead. With a thought process like that, one cannot effectively defend themselves against a wet noodle. She had a victim mentality even with the gun… It seems as if she still may have that mindset.
Yes, I’m sure that while your home is being invaded or youre being physically assaulted you can shout “Timeout!”, walk your ass down to the police station, then shout “Time In”. Makes perfect sense.
If she was shot with her own gun, very likely, she hesitated to shoot,
By several years according to “evidence” a couple posts up.
Not a lady. Ladies are not “boxers” anymore than they are Gaga or have fake hospital management “jobs”. Perhaps women.
Ladies can however pack/shoot.
And we see a recurring theme. “I failed to protect myself, so you shouldn’t even be allowed to try.” She will feel better about her own failure if nobody is allowed to succeed.
The inside of a woman’s domestic violence shelter is not a fortress. Its merely a house with other women in it away from the home environment. Nothing stops the badguy from coming to the shelter to hurt the women it contains. They totally rely on the cops. Some shelters don’t even allow men to be around for fear it might frighten the women. You might as well stay at a hotel, at least the locks are better.
She apparently lived by the mantra. “Keep your friends close and your enemy husband closer.”
And if they’re like that one next door to Dixie gun works, they publicly advertise their exact location and severe aversion to having any realistic defense on the property.
Every DV shelter I’ve known kept the residential address confidential and had a mailing address/office addresses separately.
Also, some of her statements aren’t untrue; I can know someone’s gunning for me and be prepared but I still have to do things like eat, sleep and shit–relocating to an unknown (to them area) would be a lot safer than just trusting I’d have the ability to react at all times.
From the article:
“I was shot with my own gun. Just putting a weapon in the woman’s hand is not going to reduce the number of fatalities or gunshot victims that we have,” Christy pointed out. “Too many times, their male counterpart or spouse will be able to overpower them and take that gun away.”
But very often, women successfully defend themselves from a physically larger assailant with a gun. Sure, there are a few times when they don’t. We could even suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that women have their guns taken away from them more often than they successfully use them… So what we have in this fictional scenario is: some women use guns successfully, but most have them taken away. So the antis would eliminate guns in the hands of women altogether, because they’re not deployed successfully 100% of the time?
To paraphrase our valliant Vice President… “If it saves just one woman’s life…”
I don’t buy the line about a gun being “used against her” and making it worse. If a man can just take a gun away from a woman, he could probably kill her anyway with his bare hands or any other weapon.
Whatever mental problems result in someone allowing themselves to be beaten for 20 years would almost certainly result in them not employing their gun in a no-hesitation manner the first time they pull it out. Training is probably doubly important for such a person.
I can only imagine that my wife would be long gone if I were to hit her the first time. As it should be.
Or if she had a gun you’d be pushin up daisies… I know I would be if I even thought of hitting my girlfriend.
“Whatever mental problems result in someone allowing themselves to be beaten for 20 years…”
At the risk of stating the obvious, the mental problems resulting in this case appear to be a desire, willingness, and apparent great skill at beating other women senseless. She may not have learned how to defend herself with a handgun, but her ex sure taught her that a woman’s proper place was to be used as a punching bag.
As they say, the Devil is in the details, and the details are what are getting the press. There will ALWAYS be exceptions to EVERY law. That is called life. The problem lies in the fact that laws cannot be made to account for every exception. And our society has shifted from one of independence, self-preservation, self-reliance, and self-accountability to one of litigation, and blame on someone other than self.
Tell that to Zina Haughton. She went to the police and courts. She had the piece of paper that was supposed to protect her according to Christy Martin. Her estranged husband killed her anyway at her workplace, a salon in Brookfield, WI.
Funny that she says the first place an abuse victim should go for protection is to a place where everyone has guns.
No kidding, what the hell does she think police will use to protect her, boxing gloves?
That’s right sweetie, run to a man to protect you. And you best bring this one a sandwich.
Or a donut?
I’d much rather have a gun, and risk it being taken away and used against me, than to have nothing, and just accept being beaten, stabbed or whatever else he feels like. It at least gives you a chance.
I think she already accepted her fate… to the point where nothing would have protected her short of being surrounded by those who value life (many shelters) or those employed as enforcers of the law.
Got shot with her own gun…stabbed with her own kitchen knife…beaten severely with her own baseball bat…choked by having her own boxing glove stuffed in her mouth…the list could go on and on….bottom line..she’s a loser who has no place offering anyone else advice on self defense. The part about running to the Police when threatened is just ludicrous. If she boxes, does that mean she runs to her corner or jumps out of the ring when an opponent gets the better of her in a fight…like throws a punch?
Only reason she got any reportage on this was because she said what gun prohibitionists wanted to hear and pass on to other losers.
Any stat how many women have been suffocated with their “restraining order”?
Like the man said – “it’s just piece of paper”
Good one!
Perhaps the courts could actually do some good if the woman’s copy of the Restraining Order was printed on a piece of Kevlar with a ceramic hard plate backing? May be a marketing opportunity here for some enterprising tacticool company – bullet resistant hardcases with a clear plastic cover you can slip your TRO into.
What a girl wants……..what a girl needs…….is none of this woman’s damn business when it comes to one’s God given right to self defense. I’m not sure which phantasmal opponent she’s suggesting holds that a firearm is the only solution; but a firearm is irrefutably an additional option.
Whether it is advisable that a given woman avail herself of that option largely depends on her mindset and preparation, as others have mentioned. Whether she has the natural right to make that choice for herself, however, depends on no one else; not on me, not on the State, not on society, and certainly not on the defeatist dictates of one regret-riddled victim.
Christy, have you ever had a car wreck? If so, I guess your incompetence with your tools means you believe I shouldn’t have a car either.
women should not be allowed out in public without a male escort.
and they need to be dressed in a burkha.
Any woman who’s dumb enough to fall for this bullsh1t deserves what she gets.
Protect yourselves, ladies. Nobody else is going to do it. Do you think that the guy you’re living with is going to smack you around at the risk of having his cojones ‘sploded? I’m thinking “probably not.”
Yes because when someone is breaking into your house threatening to rape you and kill your child, a cop 20 minutes away is the solution…
What does she think people live in shelters?
What a wonderful and insightful comment from the mind of someone who is beaten in the head daily, please disregard the slurred speech and droopy left eye not as signs of brain damage but worldly experience.
What a pisser. I wrote a comment for Think Progress. Seems like none of my comments get posted there. Here’s what TP didn’t want it’s readers to see:
Your best odds of surviving danger of any kind is to avoid it, and that should always be plan A.
Whether a weapon is part of alternate plans is a very personal decision. Some people would be better off without, some would be better off with. Having a gun didn’t work out for Ms. Martin, but it has worked out for very well for other women in similar situations.
Four unfortunate realities must be considered: 1) A piece of paper (like a new law or a court order) will never stop a determined killer from obtaining a deadly weapon, 2) In many domestic abuse situations, a determined killer doesn’t even need a weapon to kill, 3) the police simply cannot protect someone 24/7, and 4) by court decision at all levels (up to and including the SCOTUS), the police have no legal obligation to protect any particular person. Each potential victim of violence needs to consider these harsh realities, and decide what is best for them.
So she couldn’t shoot or overpower her aggressor… but should WAS able to run and get help like she suggests? Wait no. That’s not what happened at all… huh.
No true man will ever beat a woman. If your man is beating you, that proves (a) He doesn’t love you; (b) He is a chickenshit coward with no morals.
Just shoot him in the face. Repeatedly. He deserves no less. Better still, get your brothers to kick his ass all over town and tie him up to a lamp post with a “wife beater” sign hung around his neck. If you have no strong men to call on, get yourself a gun and start practicing. Don’t hesitate, the world will be a better place without him. Otherwise his next woman will be a victim too.
Disregard if you’re really stupid or like getting beaten up.
It’s not surprising why SI considers her a “champ”: she’s a “champion” of victim disarmament.
Having a gun may not be enough, but its a good start.
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