HedwigStrange

You know what really sucks about killing in self defense: most women aren't taught how to do it!

As I read this thread, being the over-analyzing feminist cow that I am, I noticed a trend. Young daughters and "little" wives seem to come up rather a lot as subjects of defense. Now, I'm sure that you all are nice, enlightened people. Maybe you've just caught a particularly resistant strain of patriarchalsocietitis. I say this because none of you seem to have realized that the best way to defend women is to give them the means to defend themselves. Enough quibbling over how you should decide whether or not an intruder intends to rape your loved ones. Circumvent the problem by training women to defend themselves. Then if the intruder tries to pull her pants off, your little wife can blow off his head, instead of waiting for you to play he-man defender-of-the-family.

Now, I know it isn't as if gun training isn't available for women, but if you talk about women as if they can't defend themselves, and tell them they don't need to because you will protect them, then women feel as if they don't have to learn these things, and in the end, that hurts everyone. Cut it out! Consider the implications of the way you talk about women!

In the case of young children incapable of handling guns, I think sufficient argument has already been made. If you're going to take responsibility for someone's life, it is a greater evil to risk the life of your ward than risk the life of an intruder. You can't exactly play 20 questions with Johnny Robber over a cup of tea, and waiting to see what happens beyond announcing your presence and telling the robber to leave is an invitation for them to snatch the child and use it as a shield.

As a further aside, I think that parents with teenaged daughters (say 14 and up) should consider giving them a gun for protection (along with extensive training). I know this seems like a risky proposition, but I think we tend to give teenaged girls too little credit. Yes, we can be giggly idiot-bags, but we have a right to self defense, we generally have the level of responsibility needed to control weapons, and we are much more likely to need to be able to defend ourselves.

In closing, if nothing else can illustrate my point about women needing to be able to defend themselves (and I would contend that guns are most effective for women who do not have large physical stature or amazing martial skillz), Barakaguru's statistic should really grind it in: the self-proclaimed protectors of women, their husbands and boyfriends, are the ones most likely to kill them.