"one of the leading causes of death in women" Really? Well, if you count 10th place as "one of the leading". And that's the ranking for men and women together, and included deaths from gang warfare, self defense shootings, and deaths by police.
I would suggest you read "Armed and Female" by Paxton Quigley. http://www.paxtonquigley.com/
When us gunny types see that pink gun, we think it's a WOMAN's gun, not the attacker's gun. Some women are gunnies themselves (many of whom think pink guns are silly, by the way). Male gunnies have wives or girlfriends, female friends and neighbors and colleagues, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and aunts. We want them safe.
With reasonable training and practice, an armed woman's chances of surviving an attack are very good (naturally, everybody should avoid dangerous places as much as possible -- it's always safest never to be attacked at all). Any normal woman with a gun is infinitely more dangerous to a rapist than to herself. I know women who shoot. They are competent and confident people. Come to think of it, pretty much all of the women I know who *don't* shoot are competent and confident, too. Most adults are. If they can be trusted with a car -- and women wrap their cars around a lot less trees than men do -- they can be trusted with firearms.
Men are bigger and stronger than women. When a man attacks a woman, he probably doesn't need the advantage of a weapon. The woman probably does need that advantage. Even if we could make all guns vanish (and that's not possible), unarmed women would still have as much to fear as they do now. If both parties have weapons, she's at least got an even chance, which she wouldn't have if neither were armed.
So. Bottom line: What that gun signifies to S&W and to Julie Goloski is enabling women to defend themselves, and that is absolutely consistent with supporting breast cancer research. I know it signifies something else to you. I get that. You may disagree with our reasoning, but the whole debate will make more sense to everybody if you at least know what our reasoning is.
1) Firearms are not a leading cause of death in women. There are between 10 and 15 thousand firearms deaths (not including suicides) every year in this country, with well over half the victims being male. There are many things that cause more than 7k women's deaths every year, leaving firearms way down the list.
2) There are approximately 2.5 million defensive gun uses in this country every year. If approximately half of those uses benefit women then clearly firearms represent a net benefit for womens well being.
3) Firearms are a tool, and like any other tool their goodness or badness depends entirely on the user. Drawing ana analogy to cigarettes is completely wrong because the use of cigarettes never benefits any who uses or is around those who use them, whereas millions of people in this country benefit from having or being with those who have firearms.
The point is, a company that manufactures a device that is one of the leading causes of death in women is trying to cloak itself in a "pink" campaign to help obscure that fact. This is corporate hogwash, roughly the equivalent of a cigarette maker selling a special pink cigarette for women, and then donating a tiny percentage of the profits from it to a women's lung cancer fund.
"one of the leading causes of death in women" Really? Well, if you count 10th place as "one of the leading". And that's the ranking for men and women together, and included deaths from gang warfare, self defense shootings, and deaths by police.
I would suggest you read "Armed and Female" by Paxton Quigley. http://www.paxtonquigley.com/
http://www.examiner.com/x-18149-SelfDefense-Examiner~y2009m11d2-Mobile-AL-woman-shoots-home-invading-exboyfriend-in-self-defense
When us gunny types see that pink gun, we think it's a WOMAN's gun, not the attacker's gun. Some women are gunnies themselves (many of whom think pink guns are silly, by the way). Male gunnies have wives or girlfriends, female friends and neighbors and colleagues, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and aunts. We want them safe.
With reasonable training and practice, an armed woman's chances of surviving an attack are very good (naturally, everybody should avoid dangerous places as much as possible -- it's always safest never to be attacked at all). Any normal woman with a gun is infinitely more dangerous to a rapist than to herself. I know women who shoot. They are competent and confident people. Come to think of it, pretty much all of the women I know who *don't* shoot are competent and confident, too. Most adults are. If they can be trusted with a car -- and women wrap their cars around a lot less trees than men do -- they can be trusted with firearms.
Men are bigger and stronger than women. When a man attacks a woman, he probably doesn't need the advantage of a weapon. The woman probably does need that advantage. Even if we could make all guns vanish (and that's not possible), unarmed women would still have as much to fear as they do now. If both parties have weapons, she's at least got an even chance, which she wouldn't have if neither were armed.
So. Bottom line: What that gun signifies to S&W and to Julie Goloski is enabling women to defend themselves, and that is absolutely consistent with supporting breast cancer research. I know it signifies something else to you. I get that. You may disagree with our reasoning, but the whole debate will make more sense to everybody if you at least know what our reasoning is.
1) Firearms are not a leading cause of death in women. There are between 10 and 15 thousand firearms deaths (not including suicides) every year in this country, with well over half the victims being male. There are many things that cause more than 7k women's deaths every year, leaving firearms way down the list.
2) There are approximately 2.5 million defensive gun uses in this country every year. If approximately half of those uses benefit women then clearly firearms represent a net benefit for womens well being.
3) Firearms are a tool, and like any other tool their goodness or badness depends entirely on the user. Drawing ana analogy to cigarettes is completely wrong because the use of cigarettes never benefits any who uses or is around those who use them, whereas millions of people in this country benefit from having or being with those who have firearms.
The point is, a company that manufactures a device that is one of the leading causes of death in women is trying to cloak itself in a "pink" campaign to help obscure that fact. This is corporate hogwash, roughly the equivalent of a cigarette maker selling a special pink cigarette for women, and then donating a tiny percentage of the profits from it to a women's lung cancer fund.
Anne Landman
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