“Guns Don’t Kill People . . .”
“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” This National Rifle Association (NRA) answer to any suggestion of gun control is only partially true. The fact is that men with guns kill people. At least this is what the headlines tell us.
“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” This National Rifle Association (NRA) answer to any suggestion of gun control is only partially true. The fact is that men with guns kill people. At least this is what the headlines tell us.
Whether the target is a Congresswoman, a crowd in a theater, a wife and kids, students at a university, a gynecologist providing health care for women, or people misidentified as Muslims, men with guns continue to wreak havoc at every turn. Unless we are willing to talk about guns and about gender, we will only be able to stand by and watch this combination create the same predictable results. The implications for violence against women are significant. “American women who are killed by their intimate partners are more likely to be killed with guns than by all other methods combined. In fact, each year from 1980 to 2000, 60% to 70% of batterers who killed their female intimate partners used firearms to do so.”
My grandfather taught my brother and me to hunt which meant learning to use guns safely. My grandfather had no gender bias in this area: girls as well as boys needed to learn to hunt. I am grateful for the life lessons I learned in handling a .22 rifle. Neither my brother nor I chose to pursue that portion of our cultural heritage. But that experience is light years away from having access to an AK-47 or a semi-automatic pistol whose only purpose is to take out as many people as possible before anyone can stop you.
When I was in Iceland last year lecturing on violence against women, I asked if it was common for people to have guns. My host, the Dean of the School of Theology, gave me a puzzled look and said, “No, why would we need guns?” Indeed. She went on to explain that hunting rifles were legal for people in rural areas who actually hunt for food. And then she added that they average one homicide per year in a country of 300,000 people. That’s right: one per year.
It’s not that women aren’t into guns. In fact gun manufacturers and the NRA using fear tactics, target women as consumers. The irony of this is not lost: women who fear men’s violence are told to arm themselves in self-defense which means that more guns are available in homes throughout our communities where women and children find themselves victims.
I realize that a white supremacist or other bigot, a person who is mentally ill, or a batterer whose wife and children have left him can still find ways to cause harm and mayhem. But shouldn’t we make it a little harder for them?
A civilized society should be able to have a civilized conversation about what the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution means in the 21st century. We need local and national leadership who have the courage to take us there.
Rev. Dr. Marie M. Fortune
FaithTrust Institute
www.faithtrustinstitute.org
"Guns Don't Kill People..."