War May Redefine Gun Control
By Wendy McElroy
Despite the high emotions that surround war -- or perhaps because of them --
people are focusing again on "normal" life. But what is normal has
shifted in ways both obvious and subtle. Consider how war has affected just one
issue: the debate over gun control.
For years, gun ownership advocates have agonized over how to
make women comfortable around guns. As
of 2000, 41.7 percent of men and 28.5 percent of women reported having
a gun in their household, and 39.2 percent of men but only 10 percent of women
personally owned a gun.
Reaching out to women and minorities has been a high priority
of organizations like the
National Rifle Association, not merely to swell their ranks but also to
convert segments of society that have traditionally opposed the right to own a
gun.
Now, the outreach has become easier. As of 2002,
over 210,000 women were on active duty within the military, over
150,000 were in the reserves. A steep increase in the number of
women in the military means that an unprecedented number of Gen-Next
women have overcome their mothers' aversion to guns.
Non-military women also picked up guns. NRA spokeswoman
Nance Pretto reported that, in the wake of Sept. 11, women's enrollment
in instructional shooting classes increased fourfold from years before. And gun
dealers
reported a sharp increase in women purchasing weapons.
The sense of insecurity caused by Sept. 11 was heightened as
police officers in the reserves left for active duty, depleting police
departments. Some politicians began to actively encourage women to protect
themselves by owning guns. When a serial killer was loose in Baton Rouge in the
summer of 2002, Louisiana Gov.
Mike Foster advised women "you have a right to get a
[concealed] gun permit. ... if you know how [to use a gun] and
you have a situation with some fruitcake running around, like they've got right
now, it sure can save you a lot of grief."
Foster received the predictable
backlash of outrage from gun control advocates who suddenly sounded
sexist. Holley Galland Haymaker from the anti-gun group Louisiana Ceasefire
argued: "Maybe if you're a big, white guy who hunts all the time, it might do
some good. For a woman who is surprise attacked, having a gun is only giving
them [the attacker] another way to kill you."
I will ignore the racist implications of this remark and
simply ask, "Why would a white guy who hunts be more competent with a gun than
a woman who is trained to use it?"
To judge from how strained their arguments have become, gun
control advocates realize they are losing the debate. It would be difficult to
escape this realization. Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed
H.R. 1036 -- the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act -- which grants gun
manufacturers immunity from lawsuits resulting from their products. The vote
(04/09) was 285 to 140. The measure has now moved to the Senate where it is
expected to pass.
As Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., argued, "Manufacturers of legal
products should not live under the threat of litigation simply because their
product is misused ... [W]e don't sue Ginsu when someone is stabbed to
death with their knife."
Again, the anti-gun arguments were shrill. A paper published
by the Brady Center, entitled
"Smoking Guns: Exposing the Gun Industry's Complicity in the Illegal Gun
Market," openly accused the firearms industry of "actively and
knowingly allowing guns to be sold into the illegal market." In short, gun
manufacturers were publicly charged with criminal complicity.
Other gun control advocates are pushing to have guns declared
as "weapons of mass destruction (WMD)." For example, House Bill 1210 in
Washington State defined a WMD as a "device, object, or substance that a person
intends to use to cause multiple human deaths." No specific weapons were
mentioned but the
Seattle Times opened its March 15 coverage of the bill with
the sentence, "An anti-terrorism bill has spurred debate among lawmakers: Is a
gun a weapon of mass destruction?" Possession would have been a class A felony
had the bill passed with above-referenced language. Many in the pro-gun rights
camp view the WMD argument as
an indication of attacks to come.
The underlying facts of the gun debate remain much the same as
before Sept. 11 and the war. The award-winning criminologist
Prof. Gary Kleck states that firearms are used defensively 2.5 million
times a year. 48 percent of those incidents involve women defending themselves;
most of the time a shot is not fired. The conclusion: women benefit from gun
ownership.
What is changing, however, are the
faces and attitudes of the debate.
A growing number of women feel comfortable with guns and want them for
self-defense. In response, anti-gun advocates are using arguments that seem
increasingly implausible such as classifying guns as WMDs.
Gun ownership is just one of the issues over which we will stumble on the way
back to normal life. And, as people drink coffee and read newspapers in the
morning, they will discover that the war has influenced every aspect of public
debate, including the words we use to describe and redefine our beliefs.
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