Posted on 03/13/2002 1:56:51 PM PST by Sir Gawain
Since Sept. 11, even U.S. college girls carry handguns
| Nicholas D. Kristof Saturday, March 9, 2002 |
SOUTH HADLEY, Massachusetts A generation ago, women here at Mount Holyoke College defied convention by burning bras and moving in with boyfriends. These days, some women here are shocking the campus by embracing something even more dangerous than men - guns.
"One of my guy friends said, 'you're a chick with a gun - I'm scared,"' recalled Elizabeth Abbate, beaming.
The women at Mount Holyoke, who have formed the first collegiate chapter of Second Amendment Sisters, a national women's pro-gun group, reflect the times. Alas, one of the most far-reaching consequences of Sept. 11 is a surge in gun sales around the country.
So while we Americans don't know whether more of us will be killed by anthrax, we can be quite confident that plenty of us will be killed by these additional handguns.
The FBI has figures showing that in the six months since the terror attacks it has conducted 455,000 more background checks for gun purchases than in the same period a year earlier. The agency says it has also conducted 130,000 more checks than a year earlier for applications to carry concealed weapons.
The impulse to seek protection through firearms is evident here on the lovely Mount Holyoke campus. Christie Claywood has a typical student's dorm room - piles of books, heaps of clothes, a laptop computer on the floor, bottles of liquor that she very hurriedly explains were for a birthday party - but there's also a stack of paper targets with holes from .22, .38 and even machine gun bullets.
About 50 women at Mount Holyoke have signed up to join the college's chapter of Second Amendment Sisters. It is bizarre to sit on the campus of a liberal all-women's college in Massachusetts talking with students about their yearning for, say, a Smith Wesson 9-millimeter semiautomatic - but maybe that's just because I'm not used to feminists with guns.
"Shouldn't self-defense and being able to take care of yourself be part of empowerment?" Claywood asked sweetly.
It turns out that, in addition to Women and Guns magazine, there is a growing number of such women's groups. These include Mother's Arms and Armed Females of America, whose Web site declares: "Those who push for 'gun control' are of the same mind-set as Palestinian suicide-bombers and the Taliban who kidnap women for rape and sex-slave trade. Both don't like the possibility of armed citizens, in these cases, especially an armed woman."
I grew up on a farm where rifles were essential for hunting and for keeping coyotes away from our sheep. I got a .22 rifle at age 12, and my grade school in Yamhill, Oregon, emptied of boys each year on the opening day of deer season.
So, as a country hick, I'm comfortable with guns. But there's abundant evidence that having more handguns also means more gun thefts, more armed robbery, more suicide and more murder.
Japan, where I used to live, allows only about 50 people (all leading target shooters) to own handguns, and while criminals do smuggle them in, there were only 28 gun deaths (murders and suicides combined) in 1999, the most recent year for which figures are available. By contrast, the United States had 26,800 gun deaths in 2000.
England has higher rates of assault, vehicle theft and burglary than the United States. But tight controls on handguns mean that England's murder rate is only one-sixth of America's.
Defenders of guns can intelligently argue that, as with fast cars, the pleasures of gun ownership are worth the increased mortality. That is an opinion with which one can agree or disagree.
Likewise, it is true that the overwhelming majority of guns will be used responsibly (from the point of view of everyone except hungry coyotes).
But it is pointless to try to deny the link between more handguns and increased murder and suicide rates. And that is why Americans should worry about the fallout from Sept. 11 on gun ownership. Already, since the beginning of September, more than four times as many Americans have fallen to guns as to terrorism, but quietly, one by one, with no one noticing.
The desire of Americans to defend themselves from terrorism by buying firearms will mean, almost certainly, that thousands more Americans will die in the years ahead from gunfire. It's not terrorism, but it should be terrifying.
The New York Times
EBUCK
I'm not used to feminists with guns.
A hairy armpit and an annoying voice will not always stop a 280 pound rapist.
It's pointless because then the antis would have to explain why an increase in the number of firearms in this country has been accompanied by a decrease in firearms death rates.
False. More guns means less of all these things - as partially shown later in this very silly article where England's rising violent crime rate is mentioned. But then a lack of consistency is no surprise.
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head - 'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die--
Emily Dickinson, Mt Holyoke alumnus
Typical liberal spin: an unsubstantiated claim that he is correct.
Bizarre logic.
Not only that - but Japan has about zero population of the demographic groups who make up the majority of both perps and victims in the U.S. homicide rate: blacks and Hispanics. Federal statistics released by Jackboot Janet Reno herself say that black Americans commit homicide at EIGHT times the rate that European-Americans do - and die from homicide at FIVE times the rate that European-Americans do.
Interestingly, the extreme racial disproportionality applies to all beyond-fistfight violent crime in the U.S. - including that very rarely involving guns, such as rape.
GUN RIGHTS resource library - with statistics about race and violence in America!
I can only picture this reporter covering his ears, closing his eyes and repeatedly saying "Don't bother me with the truth, don't bother me with the truth, don't bother me with the truth, la la la lala lala laalaalaaaaa!"
Don't suppose its fair of me to ask our country to let me keep my 2nd ammendment rights to keep and bear arms for this eventuality is it? At the obvious risk of cowboy style firefight in bars and in the streets. Think of it, a world where murders and rapists are shot for murdering and raping, such savagery I can hardly imagine.
Brian
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