June 21, 2010 • 27 mins
Gun ownership is most often associated with men, but should women own guns for personal safety? Is gun ownership a feminist issue, or a marketing ploy? In this episode, Molly and Cristen frame the discussion of gun ownership in terms of gender.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom? Never Told You?
From housetop works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristin Kristin Jday. Our subject
(00:21):
is guns, and it's impossible to think about women and
guns without taking a little trip back through time to
visit old Annie Oakley. Annie Oakley, shop shooter of the
Wild West. Let's talk a little bit about her, because
she's pretty cool. She's very cool. She's barely a hair
over five feet tall, and yet she could shoot your
eye out, I know. And she she was very much
(00:42):
a self made woman, had a very hard childhood. Um,
her father died, her mother had no money, and she
realized that she had this skill talked to her by
her father before he died when she was six, So
he was teaching very young girl how to shoot a gun. Um.
But she realized she was really good at it, and
so she started entering turkey hunts and she got banned
(01:03):
because she was winning so many and you know, it's
even then it was such a stereotypically male sport. Um,
and she met a man named Frank Butler, who was
assumed to be the greatest shot of all time. Old
Annie just shoots him right off the stage. She shows
him what's what, and Frank Butler actually ended up becoming
(01:24):
Mr Annie Oakley true down the road. And uh, as
you all know, she was eventually hired for the Wild
Wist Show. And at that point there were no other
acts in the Wild West Show that incorporated women. And
Annie Oakley was so good, but of course she was
admitted to it. She rose to the top of the
marquee and you know, scholars who look at her life
(01:46):
at that time say that it was a very unique
marriage of the time because uh, Frank kind of took
a backseat, became her manager, you know, scheduled appointments, took
care of her guns, whereas Annie was sort of the star,
went out, would do all her fancy gun tricks and
had the starring role in the relationship. Yes, and while
Annie Oakley was a very good shooter, she was also
(02:09):
a very savvy marketer. Because we should also know that
this is during the Victorian era, and um, she had
to carefully craft her image to appeal to largely male
audiences and yet not alienate, you know, women in families.
You know, she didn't want to become some sexy, sharp shooter.
But at the same time, she wanted to take advantage
(02:30):
of the fact that there were men in the audience.
So she designed her costumes to be fairly form footing,
to show off her curves and an athlete. She was
an athlete, and yet they were demure. They were so
she could sell as many tickets as possible. But you know,
scholars will look at that now and say that she
knew she was in this very male sport, and so
(02:51):
this was a way to make a female who was
great at it more audience friendly, so that a man
wouldn't walk out just totally intimidated by this, and the
woman wouldn't walk out being like she's not a woman
at all. She wanted to keep that feminine edge to
her performances. Now, the interesting thing, too, is that during
this time it's also the beginning of the suffrage movement.
(03:12):
And while Annie Oakley was very adamant about women, you know,
learning how to shoot guns like she did, she taught
plenty of women how to shoot. She thought it was
a great thing. She did not speak out on behalf
of the suffrage movement. She was opposed to it from
what we can tell. And it's just it's very interesting
because when war started breaking out, she wrote to presidents
(03:32):
and I was like, I will train a squadron of
women that we can send off to this war. But yeah,
she didn't believe that women should have the right to vote.
And there was a program on PBS a few years ago,
the American Experience, which kind of dived into this contradiction
in her beliefs, and uh, one scholar thought it was
a pretty crafty move if you think about what a
great marketer she was. You know, she was already breaking
(03:52):
so many stereotypes that to come out as also for
for the right of women to vote just would have
been too controversial, would have alienated her audience. And then
the others were just kind of perplexed that it really
was something that she should have been behind and wasn't. Yeah,
someone so groundbreaking professionally and yet so socially conservative. But
speaking of being socially conservative only, I think that this
(04:14):
is a good time to point out that the point
of this podcast today is not to go over pro
gun rights versus anti gun rights. Second Amendment etcetera. We're
gonna let well, let other people hash that out. We
more want to dissect this idea of women and guns
(04:35):
because while we have Antiochley, you know, back in the day, Um,
I think that it's fair to say that women and
guns is kind of a difficult issue because I don't know,
I think there's a a lot of cultural implications with
the idea of a woman owning a gun. Um. A
(04:56):
lot of times in public opinion polls, women will come
out as far more anti gun than men will. And
at the same time, you know, there's this whole concept
of well, should we own guns anyway to protect ourselves?
Is it the great equalizer? Right? We've got a lot
of commentators that we're gonna get into a bit later
who say that gun ownership is a feminist issue. So
we're going to figure out if there's any truth to that,
(05:19):
why that argument can be made. And I think that
if we're going to unpack this imagery of a woman
with a gun, we've got to go back to adds
of late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, just sort of
around when Annie Oakley is its a little bit at
her peak. How did they sell guns to women at
that point. It wasn't like be like Annie Oakley. That
is not the angle that these advertisers took. Now, the
(05:42):
idea of a woman and a gun back in the
late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds was not revolutionary
at all. It wouldn't have been controversial because in fact, Molly.
According to Laura Browder, who wrote a book about women
and guns, The History of Women and Guns, she points
out that trap shooting was the first sport open to
(06:04):
women on equal terms. It was marketed as something as
female friendly as say, going shopping or dining out with
your friends. Right, And so a lot of the ads
take up that you know, ordinariness of of a woman
trap shooting, so that the guns are pictured with the women.
Women are wearing clothes of the day, a skirt, hat,
(06:26):
they've killed a fox. It doesn't there's no mention in
the ad copy of hey, this woman is crazy she
shot a fox, and a revolutionary it was, you know,
it was the norm. So there was nothing special about
this ad in terms of it having a woman in it. Yeah,
And you would have gun ads even featuring little girls
curled up with their guns and their hunting dog, you know,
I mean it was a it was a gender neutral activity.
(06:49):
But then after the nineteen twenties, and I would think
along with World War One, in World War Two, we
see a shift in the advertising from guns in the
hands of women, you guns in the hands of men.
And you know that makes sense. Men were the ones
who are going to fight these wars that were largely
fought with guns. Uh. There were some ads from the
time of World War One that showed a man teaching
(07:11):
his wife how to use a gun while he was gone.
So that's the first example we have of guns as protection.
But by the time that World War Two was over,
the forties and fifties, the sixties, we've got women not
handling guns and ads at all. No, women and wives
and others are more looking adoring lee at their husband,
their protect her husband and their sons. Who are you know,
(07:34):
either bringing home something that they just shot and killed
that maybe she will dress and prepare for dinner. I
don't know, or um there was an ad of a
family on a picnic where the wives and mothers are
setting out the food and the boys are off shooting,
shooting baby guns or something. Um. Now in the sixties
we've got this idea perpetuated in the fifties of males
(07:57):
being the ones who shoot things. Uh so, trying to
sell the guns to men obviously. So in the sixties
you've got women in scantily clad attire with the gun. Yes,
because if we've established the gun by this point as
a man's toy, then it makes sense that savvy advertisers
who want to attract men's attention to their merchandise just
(08:21):
put in the hands of a bikini clad woman a
buck some lady. Yes, all right. And the eighties is
the big turning point that will lead us enter our
conversation today. These are the first ads, the kind of
echo the ones that were there in World War One,
the first ass that say, if you want to protect
your family ladies, and of course you do because you're
good mothers, or if you're a single woman and want
(08:42):
to protect yourself, which of course you do because it's
an unsafe world, then you need a gun for your
own protection. And then into the early nine nineties, the
National Rifle Association really tries to brush up its image
toward women and launches a magazine specifically for women called
Women's look Um, and in its ads trying to UM
(09:04):
get more women into its ranks. It frames this idea
of female gun ownership in abortion terms, which is kind
of an interesting marketing tactic it is, and it has,
you know, big pluses and big negatives, I think. But
you often hear abortion described in terms of choice, and
what they did is they took the exact same word
(09:26):
choice and said you need to have the choice to
own a gun and protect yourself. It's it's claiming as
much control over your body as the right to an abortionist.
But since we generally associate guns and violence, a number
of people have said that making that correlation is very dangerous.
(09:46):
Trying to make that relationship between you know, choice of
a gun choice of an abortion is a tricky relationship
to try to build. Now, Critics of the of this language,
the way that these guns have been sold have said that,
you know, gun mind factors only, praying on a culture
of fear, that women are scared to God alone, women
are scared to be attacked. Every man is a potential predator. UM.
(10:09):
It really puts us in the position of being victims,
constant victims, which is why they would argue that gun
ownership is a feminist choice because you eliminate that victim's status.
But you know then you can it's can go on
a continual circle about what made you feel like a
victim in the first place. Was it a really scary
gun ad um? But we'll get into that later. The
question is if they're going to sell us a gun
(10:31):
for the purpose of protection, we've got to argue, We've
got to see is it actually protecting us? Yes, And
the statistics on this are divided. I think we could
say some studies have come out saying yes, absolutely gun
ownership lowers rates of violence, and other studies have said
absolutely not. If you own a gun, you are more
(10:53):
likely to be shocked by a gun. So we will
look at both sides. First step, we've got Dr John
are a Lot who did pretty famous study about called
more guns, Less Crime, and he found that after states
expand their right to carry law or loosen their gun
regulations and restrictions, there is less crime. For example, if
(11:14):
based on his data, if New York City had adopted
a right to carry l he estimated there will be
one hundred fewer murders a year, three hundred fewer rapes,
five thousand fewer aggravated assaults, and nine thousand fewer robberies,
and that was after the law had been in effect
for five years. Yeah, he actually estimates an eight four
percent drop in the rate at which multiple victims shootings
(11:36):
occur once a state passes a right to carry law.
And he thinks that women don't even have to know
how to use their gun necessarily. It's just if you
are attacked and a woman shows a gun, that will
be enough to make an attack or run away, give up.
And um. More recently in the New York Times, there
was this kind of tongue in cheek but along the
same lines argument that if all women had guns, then
(12:00):
there wouldn't be crime at all, because you know, if
you're on let's say a subway and you're gonna mug
a woman, you know that every other woman on that
train has a gun, So what are your odds there? Well,
and his point, the point that Randy Cohen, who wrote this,
was trying to make, was if you restrict gun ownership
to women only, then you will see crime race drop drastically, because,
(12:21):
first of all, um, if you look at homicides and
crimes committed with guns, more often than not overwhelmingly it
is a man who is perpetrating the crimes, and um,
like you said, yeah, if men know that women are
gonna be packing heat, they are not gonna come around.
And lots saying that if you know, if anyone on
(12:41):
the street could have a gun, male or a female,
it's gonna reduce the risk of someone else coming up
with a gun and trying to overpower you. And can
I just toss out a figure please from Cohen's blog,
Molly that kind of blew my mind a little bit.
Give it to me. Two hundred million privately owned guns
in the United States. Yeah, that we know of. So
the big question is for those two hundred million people
(13:04):
out there who own all those baretta's, Well, some people
could own multiple guns. Oh yeah. But for that, for
those gun owners out there, I should say, are they
more protected? Are they getting their money's worth? So a
lot would say yes, but we have a few studies,
one from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and
(13:26):
one from the Violence Policy Policy Center that would say no. Uh.
The u PEN study found that people with a gun
for four point five times more likely to be shot
in an assault than those not possessing a gun. This
is from a two thousand nine study. Uh, so they're
saying that while it is possible to successfully defend yourself
with the gun, more likely than not, uh, your chances
(13:47):
of success are low because it seems like a lot
of times if you're someone wielding a gun, you are
automatically in more dangerous situations that is going to attract
some kind of violence to you. And piggybacking off of that,
the Violence Policy Center examined whether or not women use
handguns to as a self defense to kill people who
(14:10):
are who are coming at them, and they say that
that is a very rare occurrence. And that might be
because a lot of times when women are murdered with guns,
it is not by a stranger coming up to them
on the street, kind of like with with dating violence
and things like that, it's actually someone they know, an
intimate associate. Yeah, the statistic that kind of blew my mind.
(14:34):
From the Violence Policy Center, and obviously you can probably
tell from the name that they probably have an agenda.
But based on the numbers they've come up with from
all the states in for every time a woman used
a handgun to kill in self defense, a hundred and
one women were murdered with a handgun. So they're saying
that if you're if your agenda is self defense, then
(14:54):
it's unlikely that you will be able to kill. It's
more likely that you will be killed in the meantime.
And that kind of makes sense. Like, let's say you're
you're a single woman, and you're bringing a gun into
your house in terms of self defense. If it if
it is true that you're more likely to be hurt
by someone who you know, a boyfriend, UM, an ex spouse,
they probably know where the gun is. So that's the
(15:15):
argument that the Violence Policy Center makes is if you
are going to bring a gun in your home, consider
whether it's actually going to be used useful because it's
more likely that it could be used against you. Well,
And isn't it slightly ironic though, that we are, you know,
making the best case scenario of a woman murdering someone
else who is attacking her. I mean, it's still kind
of like, I think that points out the diceiness of
(15:38):
this issue. It's like the lesser of two evils. I
guess someone's still someone's still dying either way. Yeah, but
you know that's the thing that you know, if we
want to circle back to whether this is a great equalizer.
Some would argue that that man is not going to
have those qualms that you just had Christ and if
he wants to hurt you, he's gonna hurt you. And
the fact that we have to think twice about whether
(15:59):
we want to hurt them if that is the best
case scenario. Those critics would argue that that's an example
of how we as women have been trained to think
that guns are mail and violence is mail, and we
have no choice in the matter that we are. You know,
we are accepting our weaker sex position, which is why
(16:20):
I think we have to point out. Some people have
said that guns should be a feminist issue, and this
includes Megan mccartell who writes in The Atlantic Monthly, and
she says, and this is a quote, guns are the
only weapon that equal as a strength between the attacker
(16:40):
and the attack. It's the only time when the man's
greater speed, strength, UM and longer reach make no difference.
If you pull the trigger first, you win. And she says,
I'm all for strengthening the social contract um so that
if you're mean create, commit rape, assault or robbery. But
until human nature has improved so radically, the grievous bodily
(17:00):
harm has passed from living memory. I don't understand why
more feminists don't push for widespread gun ownership. And like
we said, Molly, this isn't you, and I don't want to,
you know, get into some pro anti gun conversation, but
framed from a feminist perspective, I think mccarnel does make
an interesting point, right, And that's something that's echoed by
(17:21):
conservative commentator Laura Ingram, who argues that gun ownership is
the one area in which a woman is trying to
make strides with men by having as many guns as
he does. Since men do own more guns in this country,
it's the only area in which when a woman tries
to become equal with men, feminists don't stand up an
applaud In fact, they criticized woman. And just generally speaking,
(17:42):
I think that we should point out that, um, you know,
women are usually in favor of more gun control than
men are. And then if you look at the demographic
breakdown of gun ownership in the US, um it's about
ten women and men. So s guns are in the
hands of men far more often than women, even though,
(18:05):
according to svey from the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Gun
retailers saw a seventy jump in female customers last year,
so they're trying to make the case that there are
more women buying guns. Yeah, and they are trying to
market guns more to women. We've seen things like, you know,
pink candled guns, smaller guns, especially designed for women that
(18:27):
don't have as much kickback, fashionable holsters. Fashionable holsters. I
have been looking for a fashionable hole sur for my
for my glock for so long. Um that was joke. Um. Yeah,
I mean they're they're obviously trying to push this. I mean,
and I think, Molly, this is one thing that we
haven't mentioned yet. I mean, they want to move guns
off the shelf, so of course they're going to target women.
(18:49):
It's kind of like when we were talking in the
podcast about women in cars. There comes there came a
point where the male market with cars was so saturated
that if course they need a two car households and
you know, push push cars to women and mothers and
wives and whoever to get around so that they could
simply move more cars off the lot. So I think,
(19:12):
while yes, I mean, there is this argument for protection,
at the same time, we can't forget that these are
businesses that are marketing towards us. So we've given a
little bit of airtime to this one side, that a
gun is an equalizer. The flip side, we've referenced it before,
is just that these gun makers are businesses, as Kristen said,
and they're in the business of making you afraid. That
(19:33):
the reason that you do think that a gun would
protect you from attack is that you there are gun
ads that essentially show a beaten up woman who says,
where was you know, where were the police? They're not
going to protect me. I need a gun, um, And
you know that may be the case. That might happen,
but it may not. So you're you're basically betting on fear. Yeah,
are we breeding a culture of fear, which is, you know,
(19:55):
not a great way to live. And also, I would
think something that um is not exactly in line with
feminist ideology as well. Women don't need to live out
of fear and live out of a victim mentality that
all we should, you know, be able to walk safely
wherever we want to go, whether or not we're um,
you know, pack and heat or not. So I think
(20:15):
that leads us into this question of you know, would
it be better if we just got rid of guns entirely?
You know, because a lot of uh, like I mentioned, um,
public survey polls usually show that women in general favor
more gun control than men do. But some men would
say that women are simply afraid of guns because they're
(20:38):
afraid of men. Yes, let's talk about this guy named
Richard Poe who wrote a book called The Seven Myths
of Gun Control, and he talks about how, you know,
guns are this ultimate male symbol. So the fact that
women are largely in favor of gun control is a
sign of an anti male agenda. Yes, I mean, at
(21:00):
this point we could get into symbolism of the guns
symbolizing the phallic uh, you know, all of these male
associated images when it has to do with guns, and um,
some men say that by by limiting their access to
guns is a form of castration, right, um. And I
(21:24):
mean I don't want to get too into post quotes
because on the one hand, they seemed just ridiculous, But
I guess if you want to think about symbolism, it
makes sense that you know, they're saying, oh, if if
a gun makes a man a warrior, and you take
away his gun. Have you emasculated him and weakened him
so that you can be this ral Ralph feminist who
takes over the world. That's that's the quote taken to
(21:44):
an extreme. He didn't say that, so that's more of
a paraphrase. Yes, it was a bit of a paraphrase
on my part. A paraphrase. But well, I think as
as kind of extreme as pose argument, at least framed
in your words, may sound, I do think that it
brings us to the point that underscores the fact that
(22:06):
no matter which side of the gun argument that you
fall on, whether you're pro or anti gun control, um,
it's still somehow framed in these gendered terms in which
more gun control implies taking guns away from men, and
extended gun rights means enfranchising women. Because that's the way
(22:28):
that it has been advertised, and it has been debated
and politicize up to this point. And I think by
the fact that um, we it keeps coming back to
men versus women with guns, um, and all of the
implications with violence, who's the victim, who's the perpetrator, all
of this, it only complicates the issue and in an
(22:51):
already complex problem, you know, a complex topic to debate.
So that's why at this point we want to hear
from our esteemed listeners, gun owners, gun haters, gun who
doesn't care about Nothing's I can't wait, from the skeet shooters,
anti Oakley wannabes, water gun shooters. Let's hear your thoughts, paintballers, paintballers. Yes,
(23:16):
let's hear your thoughts about this, uh mom stuff, how
stuff works? Dot com is our address, and in the meantime,
while you're typing up your frenzied email to that address,
let's hear what some other people have written in sem
Me one from Marcia, and this one manages to merge
(23:37):
our recent children's literature podcasts and our tattoo podcast excellent
two for the price of one. Marcia writes, I have
lots of and enjoy both books and tattoos. Personally, I
feel as though tattoos are works have self expression to
fit the ideals, preferences, and lives of those who they
belong to. The ones I have are all thought out
well in advance and represent things I feel strongly enough
(23:59):
about to have in my by the rest of my life.
One is a stack of books. Here's here's the merge
of the two. One is a stack of books on
the outside of my leg, complete with my favorite authors represented.
Another is a small snail with the word keep next
to it, on the inside of my right wrist, on
the same leg as the stack of books. I have
Star Girl. You ask for influential literary feminists while she
is mine. I first read Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli when
(24:21):
I was about fifteen. It's about a home school girl
who gets put into public school and figured about me. Mother.
Have you read star Girl? I wrote star Girl? Okay, sorry.
It's about a homeschool girl who gets put into public
school in the tenth grade. She has never been tainted
by cliques and popularity of other girls in school, so
she is wholly unique. It's an amazing story and made
(24:41):
me want to change who I was to be more
true to myself. It may not be child literature and
more like young adult, but it definitely affected me in
high school and real quick. Marcia's reading list is Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, nine four by
George Orwell, The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins, and Anything
She Can Get a hold Of by Chris It for more. Well,
I have a reading list here from Katie to follow
(25:03):
up on that, and Katie's reading list has a theme
I like this um, she says, I decided to tackle
some books on marriage. My fiance and I both come
from divorced families, and we were unshared marriage for a
long time, but after five years of living together, we
decided to just go for it and see what all
the fuss is about. I'm not really interested in books
on how to have a great marriage, quote unquote, but
(25:24):
stories from the trenches, so to speak, and maybe some
thoughts on how to reconcile my ideas of what it
means to be both a feminist and a wife. I
just finished Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I could really
relate to her skepticism of marriage with a willingness to
ultimately take the plunge. Next next up is Manhood for
Amateurs by Michael Shaban for the male perspective, then Bad
(25:46):
Mother by Isolet Waldman, and then she has Cleaving by
Julie Powell and I do, but I don't buy Cammy
wick Off Your is marriage a good investment? Podcasts fit
nicely into all of this, so thing for that and
you'll welcome so again. If you want to send us
an email, the address is mom Stuff at how stuff
(26:06):
works dot com. If you have any thoughts you would
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We're putting more reading lists on Twitter and Facebook. Yes, essentially,
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hope you have a summer vacation coming up, and you
(26:28):
know what else you could read on your summer vacation
is our blog stuff Mom Never Told You, which is
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It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom? Never Told You?
From housetop works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristin Kristin Jday. Our subject
(00:21):
is guns, and it's impossible to think about women and
guns without taking a little trip back through time to
visit old Annie Oakley. Annie Oakley, shop shooter of the
Wild West. Let's talk a little bit about her, because
she's pretty cool. She's very cool. She's barely a hair
over five feet tall, and yet she could shoot your
eye out, I know. And she she was very much
(00:42):
a self made woman, had a very hard childhood. Um,
her father died, her mother had no money, and she
realized that she had this skill talked to her by
her father before he died when she was six, So
he was teaching very young girl how to shoot a gun. Um.
But she realized she was really good at it, and
so she started entering turkey hunts and she got banned
(01:03):
because she was winning so many and you know, it's
even then it was such a stereotypically male sport. Um,
and she met a man named Frank Butler, who was
assumed to be the greatest shot of all time. Old
Annie just shoots him right off the stage. She shows
him what's what, and Frank Butler actually ended up becoming
(01:24):
Mr Annie Oakley true down the road. And uh, as
you all know, she was eventually hired for the Wild
Wist Show. And at that point there were no other
acts in the Wild West Show that incorporated women. And
Annie Oakley was so good, but of course she was
admitted to it. She rose to the top of the
marquee and you know, scholars who look at her life
(01:46):
at that time say that it was a very unique
marriage of the time because uh, Frank kind of took
a backseat, became her manager, you know, scheduled appointments, took
care of her guns, whereas Annie was sort of the star,
went out, would do all her fancy gun tricks and
had the starring role in the relationship. Yes, and while
Annie Oakley was a very good shooter, she was also
(02:09):
a very savvy marketer. Because we should also know that
this is during the Victorian era, and um, she had
to carefully craft her image to appeal to largely male
audiences and yet not alienate, you know, women in families.
You know, she didn't want to become some sexy, sharp shooter.
But at the same time, she wanted to take advantage
(02:30):
of the fact that there were men in the audience.
So she designed her costumes to be fairly form footing,
to show off her curves and an athlete. She was
an athlete, and yet they were demure. They were so
she could sell as many tickets as possible. But you know,
scholars will look at that now and say that she
knew she was in this very male sport, and so
(02:51):
this was a way to make a female who was
great at it more audience friendly, so that a man
wouldn't walk out just totally intimidated by this, and the
woman wouldn't walk out being like she's not a woman
at all. She wanted to keep that feminine edge to
her performances. Now, the interesting thing, too, is that during
this time it's also the beginning of the suffrage movement.
(03:12):
And while Annie Oakley was very adamant about women, you know,
learning how to shoot guns like she did, she taught
plenty of women how to shoot. She thought it was
a great thing. She did not speak out on behalf
of the suffrage movement. She was opposed to it from
what we can tell. And it's just it's very interesting
because when war started breaking out, she wrote to presidents
(03:32):
and I was like, I will train a squadron of
women that we can send off to this war. But yeah,
she didn't believe that women should have the right to vote.
And there was a program on PBS a few years ago,
the American Experience, which kind of dived into this contradiction
in her beliefs, and uh, one scholar thought it was
a pretty crafty move if you think about what a
great marketer she was. You know, she was already breaking
(03:52):
so many stereotypes that to come out as also for
for the right of women to vote just would have
been too controversial, would have alienated her audience. And then
the others were just kind of perplexed that it really
was something that she should have been behind and wasn't. Yeah,
someone so groundbreaking professionally and yet so socially conservative. But
speaking of being socially conservative only, I think that this
(04:14):
is a good time to point out that the point
of this podcast today is not to go over pro
gun rights versus anti gun rights. Second Amendment etcetera. We're
gonna let well, let other people hash that out. We
more want to dissect this idea of women and guns
(04:35):
because while we have Antiochley, you know, back in the day, Um,
I think that it's fair to say that women and
guns is kind of a difficult issue because I don't know,
I think there's a a lot of cultural implications with
the idea of a woman owning a gun. Um. A
(04:56):
lot of times in public opinion polls, women will come
out as far more anti gun than men will. And
at the same time, you know, there's this whole concept
of well, should we own guns anyway to protect ourselves?
Is it the great equalizer? Right? We've got a lot
of commentators that we're gonna get into a bit later
who say that gun ownership is a feminist issue. So
we're going to figure out if there's any truth to that,
(05:19):
why that argument can be made. And I think that
if we're going to unpack this imagery of a woman
with a gun, we've got to go back to adds
of late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, just sort of
around when Annie Oakley is its a little bit at
her peak. How did they sell guns to women at
that point. It wasn't like be like Annie Oakley. That
is not the angle that these advertisers took. Now, the
(05:42):
idea of a woman and a gun back in the
late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds was not revolutionary
at all. It wouldn't have been controversial because in fact, Molly.
According to Laura Browder, who wrote a book about women
and guns, The History of Women and Guns, she points
out that trap shooting was the first sport open to
(06:04):
women on equal terms. It was marketed as something as
female friendly as say, going shopping or dining out with
your friends. Right, And so a lot of the ads
take up that you know, ordinariness of of a woman
trap shooting, so that the guns are pictured with the women.
Women are wearing clothes of the day, a skirt, hat,
(06:26):
they've killed a fox. It doesn't there's no mention in
the ad copy of hey, this woman is crazy she
shot a fox, and a revolutionary it was, you know,
it was the norm. So there was nothing special about
this ad in terms of it having a woman in it. Yeah,
And you would have gun ads even featuring little girls
curled up with their guns and their hunting dog, you know,
I mean it was a it was a gender neutral activity.
(06:49):
But then after the nineteen twenties, and I would think
along with World War One, in World War Two, we
see a shift in the advertising from guns in the
hands of women, you guns in the hands of men.
And you know that makes sense. Men were the ones
who are going to fight these wars that were largely
fought with guns. Uh. There were some ads from the
time of World War One that showed a man teaching
(07:11):
his wife how to use a gun while he was gone.
So that's the first example we have of guns as protection.
But by the time that World War Two was over,
the forties and fifties, the sixties, we've got women not
handling guns and ads at all. No, women and wives
and others are more looking adoring lee at their husband,
their protect her husband and their sons. Who are you know,
(07:34):
either bringing home something that they just shot and killed
that maybe she will dress and prepare for dinner. I
don't know, or um there was an ad of a
family on a picnic where the wives and mothers are
setting out the food and the boys are off shooting,
shooting baby guns or something. Um. Now in the sixties
we've got this idea perpetuated in the fifties of males
(07:57):
being the ones who shoot things. Uh so, trying to
sell the guns to men obviously. So in the sixties
you've got women in scantily clad attire with the gun. Yes,
because if we've established the gun by this point as
a man's toy, then it makes sense that savvy advertisers
who want to attract men's attention to their merchandise just
(08:21):
put in the hands of a bikini clad woman a
buck some lady. Yes, all right. And the eighties is
the big turning point that will lead us enter our
conversation today. These are the first ads, the kind of
echo the ones that were there in World War One,
the first ass that say, if you want to protect
your family ladies, and of course you do because you're
good mothers, or if you're a single woman and want
(08:42):
to protect yourself, which of course you do because it's
an unsafe world, then you need a gun for your
own protection. And then into the early nine nineties, the
National Rifle Association really tries to brush up its image
toward women and launches a magazine specifically for women called
Women's look Um, and in its ads trying to UM
(09:04):
get more women into its ranks. It frames this idea
of female gun ownership in abortion terms, which is kind
of an interesting marketing tactic it is, and it has,
you know, big pluses and big negatives, I think. But
you often hear abortion described in terms of choice, and
what they did is they took the exact same word
(09:26):
choice and said you need to have the choice to
own a gun and protect yourself. It's it's claiming as
much control over your body as the right to an abortionist.
But since we generally associate guns and violence, a number
of people have said that making that correlation is very dangerous.
(09:46):
Trying to make that relationship between you know, choice of
a gun choice of an abortion is a tricky relationship
to try to build. Now, Critics of the of this language,
the way that these guns have been sold have said that,
you know, gun mind factors only, praying on a culture
of fear, that women are scared to God alone, women
are scared to be attacked. Every man is a potential predator. UM.
(10:09):
It really puts us in the position of being victims,
constant victims, which is why they would argue that gun
ownership is a feminist choice because you eliminate that victim's status.
But you know then you can it's can go on
a continual circle about what made you feel like a
victim in the first place. Was it a really scary
gun ad um? But we'll get into that later. The
question is if they're going to sell us a gun
(10:31):
for the purpose of protection, we've got to argue, We've
got to see is it actually protecting us? Yes, And
the statistics on this are divided. I think we could
say some studies have come out saying yes, absolutely gun
ownership lowers rates of violence, and other studies have said
absolutely not. If you own a gun, you are more
(10:53):
likely to be shocked by a gun. So we will
look at both sides. First step, we've got Dr John
are a Lot who did pretty famous study about called
more guns, Less Crime, and he found that after states
expand their right to carry law or loosen their gun
regulations and restrictions, there is less crime. For example, if
(11:14):
based on his data, if New York City had adopted
a right to carry l he estimated there will be
one hundred fewer murders a year, three hundred fewer rapes,
five thousand fewer aggravated assaults, and nine thousand fewer robberies,
and that was after the law had been in effect
for five years. Yeah, he actually estimates an eight four
percent drop in the rate at which multiple victims shootings
(11:36):
occur once a state passes a right to carry law.
And he thinks that women don't even have to know
how to use their gun necessarily. It's just if you
are attacked and a woman shows a gun, that will
be enough to make an attack or run away, give up.
And um. More recently in the New York Times, there
was this kind of tongue in cheek but along the
same lines argument that if all women had guns, then
(12:00):
there wouldn't be crime at all, because you know, if
you're on let's say a subway and you're gonna mug
a woman, you know that every other woman on that
train has a gun, So what are your odds there? Well,
and his point, the point that Randy Cohen, who wrote this,
was trying to make, was if you restrict gun ownership
to women only, then you will see crime race drop drastically, because,
(12:21):
first of all, um, if you look at homicides and
crimes committed with guns, more often than not overwhelmingly it
is a man who is perpetrating the crimes, and um,
like you said, yeah, if men know that women are
gonna be packing heat, they are not gonna come around.
And lots saying that if you know, if anyone on
(12:41):
the street could have a gun, male or a female,
it's gonna reduce the risk of someone else coming up
with a gun and trying to overpower you. And can
I just toss out a figure please from Cohen's blog,
Molly that kind of blew my mind a little bit.
Give it to me. Two hundred million privately owned guns
in the United States. Yeah, that we know of. So
the big question is for those two hundred million people
(13:04):
out there who own all those baretta's, Well, some people
could own multiple guns. Oh yeah. But for that, for
those gun owners out there, I should say, are they
more protected? Are they getting their money's worth? So a
lot would say yes, but we have a few studies,
one from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and
(13:26):
one from the Violence Policy Policy Center that would say no. Uh.
The u PEN study found that people with a gun
for four point five times more likely to be shot
in an assault than those not possessing a gun. This
is from a two thousand nine study. Uh, so they're
saying that while it is possible to successfully defend yourself
with the gun, more likely than not, uh, your chances
(13:47):
of success are low because it seems like a lot
of times if you're someone wielding a gun, you are
automatically in more dangerous situations that is going to attract
some kind of violence to you. And piggybacking off of that,
the Violence Policy Center examined whether or not women use
handguns to as a self defense to kill people who
(14:10):
are who are coming at them, and they say that
that is a very rare occurrence. And that might be
because a lot of times when women are murdered with guns,
it is not by a stranger coming up to them
on the street, kind of like with with dating violence
and things like that, it's actually someone they know, an
intimate associate. Yeah, the statistic that kind of blew my mind.
(14:34):
From the Violence Policy Center, and obviously you can probably
tell from the name that they probably have an agenda.
But based on the numbers they've come up with from
all the states in for every time a woman used
a handgun to kill in self defense, a hundred and
one women were murdered with a handgun. So they're saying
that if you're if your agenda is self defense, then
(14:54):
it's unlikely that you will be able to kill. It's
more likely that you will be killed in the meantime.
And that kind of makes sense. Like, let's say you're
you're a single woman, and you're bringing a gun into
your house in terms of self defense. If it if
it is true that you're more likely to be hurt
by someone who you know, a boyfriend, UM, an ex spouse,
they probably know where the gun is. So that's the
(15:15):
argument that the Violence Policy Center makes is if you
are going to bring a gun in your home, consider
whether it's actually going to be used useful because it's
more likely that it could be used against you. Well,
And isn't it slightly ironic though, that we are, you know,
making the best case scenario of a woman murdering someone
else who is attacking her. I mean, it's still kind
of like, I think that points out the diceiness of
(15:38):
this issue. It's like the lesser of two evils. I
guess someone's still someone's still dying either way. Yeah, but
you know that's the thing that you know, if we
want to circle back to whether this is a great equalizer.
Some would argue that that man is not going to
have those qualms that you just had Christ and if
he wants to hurt you, he's gonna hurt you. And
the fact that we have to think twice about whether
(15:59):
we want to hurt them if that is the best
case scenario. Those critics would argue that that's an example
of how we as women have been trained to think
that guns are mail and violence is mail, and we
have no choice in the matter that we are. You know,
we are accepting our weaker sex position, which is why
(16:20):
I think we have to point out. Some people have
said that guns should be a feminist issue, and this
includes Megan mccartell who writes in The Atlantic Monthly, and
she says, and this is a quote, guns are the
only weapon that equal as a strength between the attacker
(16:40):
and the attack. It's the only time when the man's
greater speed, strength, UM and longer reach make no difference.
If you pull the trigger first, you win. And she says,
I'm all for strengthening the social contract um so that
if you're mean create, commit rape, assault or robbery. But
until human nature has improved so radically, the grievous bodily
(17:00):
harm has passed from living memory. I don't understand why
more feminists don't push for widespread gun ownership. And like
we said, Molly, this isn't you, and I don't want to,
you know, get into some pro anti gun conversation, but
framed from a feminist perspective, I think mccarnel does make
an interesting point, right, And that's something that's echoed by
(17:21):
conservative commentator Laura Ingram, who argues that gun ownership is
the one area in which a woman is trying to
make strides with men by having as many guns as
he does. Since men do own more guns in this country,
it's the only area in which when a woman tries
to become equal with men, feminists don't stand up an
applaud In fact, they criticized woman. And just generally speaking,
(17:42):
I think that we should point out that, um, you know,
women are usually in favor of more gun control than
men are. And then if you look at the demographic
breakdown of gun ownership in the US, um it's about
ten women and men. So s guns are in the
hands of men far more often than women, even though,
(18:05):
according to svey from the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Gun
retailers saw a seventy jump in female customers last year,
so they're trying to make the case that there are
more women buying guns. Yeah, and they are trying to
market guns more to women. We've seen things like, you know,
pink candled guns, smaller guns, especially designed for women that
(18:27):
don't have as much kickback, fashionable holsters. Fashionable holsters. I
have been looking for a fashionable hole sur for my
for my glock for so long. Um that was joke. Um. Yeah,
I mean they're they're obviously trying to push this. I mean,
and I think, Molly, this is one thing that we
haven't mentioned yet. I mean, they want to move guns
off the shelf, so of course they're going to target women.
(18:49):
It's kind of like when we were talking in the
podcast about women in cars. There comes there came a
point where the male market with cars was so saturated
that if course they need a two car households and
you know, push push cars to women and mothers and
wives and whoever to get around so that they could
simply move more cars off the lot. So I think,
(19:12):
while yes, I mean, there is this argument for protection,
at the same time, we can't forget that these are
businesses that are marketing towards us. So we've given a
little bit of airtime to this one side, that a
gun is an equalizer. The flip side, we've referenced it before,
is just that these gun makers are businesses, as Kristen said,
and they're in the business of making you afraid. That
(19:33):
the reason that you do think that a gun would
protect you from attack is that you there are gun
ads that essentially show a beaten up woman who says,
where was you know, where were the police? They're not
going to protect me. I need a gun, um, And
you know that may be the case. That might happen,
but it may not. So you're you're basically betting on fear. Yeah,
are we breeding a culture of fear, which is, you know,
(19:55):
not a great way to live. And also, I would
think something that um is not exactly in line with
feminist ideology as well. Women don't need to live out
of fear and live out of a victim mentality that
all we should, you know, be able to walk safely
wherever we want to go, whether or not we're um,
you know, pack and heat or not. So I think
(20:15):
that leads us into this question of you know, would
it be better if we just got rid of guns entirely?
You know, because a lot of uh, like I mentioned, um,
public survey polls usually show that women in general favor
more gun control than men do. But some men would
say that women are simply afraid of guns because they're
(20:38):
afraid of men. Yes, let's talk about this guy named
Richard Poe who wrote a book called The Seven Myths
of Gun Control, and he talks about how, you know,
guns are this ultimate male symbol. So the fact that
women are largely in favor of gun control is a
sign of an anti male agenda. Yes, I mean, at
(21:00):
this point we could get into symbolism of the guns
symbolizing the phallic uh, you know, all of these male
associated images when it has to do with guns, and um,
some men say that by by limiting their access to
guns is a form of castration, right, um. And I
(21:24):
mean I don't want to get too into post quotes
because on the one hand, they seemed just ridiculous, But
I guess if you want to think about symbolism, it
makes sense that you know, they're saying, oh, if if
a gun makes a man a warrior, and you take
away his gun. Have you emasculated him and weakened him
so that you can be this ral Ralph feminist who
takes over the world. That's that's the quote taken to
(21:44):
an extreme. He didn't say that, so that's more of
a paraphrase. Yes, it was a bit of a paraphrase
on my part. A paraphrase. But well, I think as
as kind of extreme as pose argument, at least framed
in your words, may sound, I do think that it
brings us to the point that underscores the fact that
(22:06):
no matter which side of the gun argument that you
fall on, whether you're pro or anti gun control, um,
it's still somehow framed in these gendered terms in which
more gun control implies taking guns away from men, and
extended gun rights means enfranchising women. Because that's the way
(22:28):
that it has been advertised, and it has been debated
and politicize up to this point. And I think by
the fact that um, we it keeps coming back to
men versus women with guns, um, and all of the
implications with violence, who's the victim, who's the perpetrator, all
of this, it only complicates the issue and in an
(22:51):
already complex problem, you know, a complex topic to debate.
So that's why at this point we want to hear
from our esteemed listeners, gun owners, gun haters, gun who
doesn't care about Nothing's I can't wait, from the skeet shooters,
anti Oakley wannabes, water gun shooters. Let's hear your thoughts, paintballers, paintballers. Yes,
(23:16):
let's hear your thoughts about this, uh mom stuff, how
stuff works? Dot com is our address, and in the meantime,
while you're typing up your frenzied email to that address,
let's hear what some other people have written in sem
Me one from Marcia, and this one manages to merge
(23:37):
our recent children's literature podcasts and our tattoo podcast excellent
two for the price of one. Marcia writes, I have
lots of and enjoy both books and tattoos. Personally, I
feel as though tattoos are works have self expression to
fit the ideals, preferences, and lives of those who they
belong to. The ones I have are all thought out
well in advance and represent things I feel strongly enough
(23:59):
about to have in my by the rest of my life.
One is a stack of books. Here's here's the merge
of the two. One is a stack of books on
the outside of my leg, complete with my favorite authors represented.
Another is a small snail with the word keep next
to it, on the inside of my right wrist, on
the same leg as the stack of books. I have
Star Girl. You ask for influential literary feminists while she
is mine. I first read Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli when
(24:21):
I was about fifteen. It's about a home school girl
who gets put into public school and figured about me. Mother.
Have you read star Girl? I wrote star Girl? Okay, sorry.
It's about a homeschool girl who gets put into public
school in the tenth grade. She has never been tainted
by cliques and popularity of other girls in school, so
she is wholly unique. It's an amazing story and made
(24:41):
me want to change who I was to be more
true to myself. It may not be child literature and
more like young adult, but it definitely affected me in
high school and real quick. Marcia's reading list is Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, nine four by
George Orwell, The Hunger Games by Susanne Collins, and Anything
She Can Get a hold Of by Chris It for more. Well,
I have a reading list here from Katie to follow
(25:03):
up on that, and Katie's reading list has a theme
I like this um, she says, I decided to tackle
some books on marriage. My fiance and I both come
from divorced families, and we were unshared marriage for a
long time, but after five years of living together, we
decided to just go for it and see what all
the fuss is about. I'm not really interested in books
on how to have a great marriage, quote unquote, but
(25:24):
stories from the trenches, so to speak, and maybe some
thoughts on how to reconcile my ideas of what it
means to be both a feminist and a wife. I
just finished Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I could really
relate to her skepticism of marriage with a willingness to
ultimately take the plunge. Next next up is Manhood for
Amateurs by Michael Shaban for the male perspective, then Bad
(25:46):
Mother by Isolet Waldman, and then she has Cleaving by
Julie Powell and I do, but I don't buy Cammy
wick Off Your is marriage a good investment? Podcasts fit
nicely into all of this, so thing for that and
you'll welcome so again. If you want to send us
an email, the address is mom Stuff at how stuff
(26:06):
works dot com. If you have any thoughts you would
like to send our way during the week, go ahead
and hit over to our Twitter, head over to our Facebook.
We're putting more reading lists on Twitter and Facebook. Yes, essentially,
you'll never be able to turn around and not see
a reading list from us, so you'll have plenty of
ideas for things to read on your summer vacations. I
hope you have a summer vacation coming up, and you
(26:28):
know what else you could read on your summer vacation
is our blog stuff Mom Never Told You, which is
as always located at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, does it
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
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