Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, wrote an op-ed recently on Elle.com in which she argued that the entire gun debate really hinges on one issue: misogyny.
“To be clear, pro-gun activists don’t disagree with us because they actually believe we want to take their guns away,” Watts insisted. “They hate us because we’re women.”
Anytime someone takes a multidimensional problem and reduces it to a single input or cause, you know they’re full of it. Take the putative “gender pay gap” for example. The argument progressives and feminists make is that because women on average make less than men it must be due to sexism. That’s the only way to explain it.
Forget the fact that men on average work longer hours, are more willing to move from their hometown to pursue a career elsewhere, choose jobs that pay better (men are overrepresented in STEM fields), just to name a few of the 25 or so variables that correspond to higher wages. No, none of that matters. Women make less because of the “oppressive patriarchy,” they’d have us believe.
What’s hilarious, of course, is that the folks who push this nonsense never bother to ask themselves this question: If companies can pay women less for doing the same job as men, why aren’t they hiring women exclusively?
It’d be infinitely better for the bottom line if a company could field a workforce that makes 8 or 9 or 10 percent less than the “prevailing rate.”
SEE ALSO: Shannon Watts on NRA Bankruptcy Hearing: Gun Lobby Is ‘Broken’
Anyway, Watts is playing the same reductive game with respect to the antipathy she receives from pro-gunners. The claim is that misogyny, and misogyny alone is fueling their enmity.
Hmmm, that doesn’t pass the smell test. For starters, and as at least one other gun writer noted, the gun-rights movement isn’t a monolith of “evil white men.” As it turns out, a significant portion is women. To give one an idea, women purchased 40 percent of the 21 million guns sold in 2020, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
While there may be a few women out there who hate women because they are women (female misogynists), no one can argue with a straight face that it represents a majority. This means that when the overwhelming number of non-self-hating women criticize Watts they’re doing so because of something else, not because of her gender.
What could that “something else” be? Any number of things, really. But if I had to speculate it I’d put these at the top of the list:
- Watts supports criminalize private transfers.
- Watts supports prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and transfer of certain black rifles and accessories.
- Watts supports repealing the PLCCA which protects gun makers and retailers from frivolous lawsuits. Doing so, could bankrupt the industry.
- Watts supports banning homebuilt guns, inlcuding parts and kits.
- Watts supports outlawing suppressors.
- Watts supports confiscatory red flag laws.
- Watts supports creating more gun-free zones.
- Watts supports disarming teachers.
- Watts supports ending open carry.
- Watts supports blocking national reciprocity.
- Watts supports waiting periods for gun purchases.
All of the aforementioned would chill the 2A rights of law-abiding citizens while doing nothing to reduce crime. Perhaps, it’s these positions that are the cause of the rancor she receives from female gun owners, and male gun owners alike. Perhaps, at the end of the day, misogyny has little to nothing to do with it.
SEE ALSO: Mother, Iraq Vet Uses Pistol to Foil Attempted Carjacking
I’ll end by saying that if Mrs. Watts legitimately fears for her safety, she should consider making herself a hard target. Because the best way to ensure personal safety is to maximize personal preparedness.
Put another way, if you want peace, prepare for war. Work out, learn martial arts, and become competent with firearms and other tools of self-defense. Doing so will empower you to a degree that you cannot imagine. It may also make you realize that the very right you’ve made a career railing against is the very right that levels the playing field between the two sexes.
Violent men lose their edge in the face of a capably armed woman. Just ask Charise Taylor. The New Orleans mother and Iraq vet who, earlier this month, defended herself and her son from a would-be carjacker. Without her pistol, her training, and her defensive mindset, who knows what might have happened.
I’d argue that this is one of the main reasons why you, Mrs. Watts, receive a lot of flak from the pro-2A community. Because when you suppress 2A rights you end up making it harder for the Charise Taylors of the world, those who don’t have the means and resources to outsource their personal safety to a third party or private security firm, to protect themselves and the ones they love.
So, why do certain gun totin’ women hate her?
Don’t think so Shannon, and your statement smacks of ‘Gender Bias’.
Perhaps you’re just a man hater????
Oh yeah right, all the women are you Watts.
They cling to claims of idenity-based hate to avoid the truth: we hate them because they are both stupid and dishonest.
Shannon Watts, you aren’t hated because you are a woman. You are hated because every time you open your mouth you sound like an idiot.
Send her to an Islamic country and then she will realize what misogyny is all about. Or wait until Bloomberg, Soros, Davos and the others from her beloved left have finished their Islamization plans for all of the western world and then watch her becoming silent, having to wear a rug all day, if her head has not been chopped off for being such a female loudmouth. Sending her on a trip to Germany, France and Britain these days may help too, because these countries are already Islamic so far, at the point of no return.
Seriously, I hope for the day when she becomes the victim of a crime and there is nothing that she can do about it, because she is absolutely defenseless and even openly states so. I really wonder if she will then finally wake up. And I would laugh even more if her attacker is surprisingly a female.
When i was a lil boy, i was told that, the girls secretly like you is why they tease, chase, harrass, punch you, but they never looked into those eyes! Of course, this was in a left-coast state where Angela Davis and Madlyn O’hare were all-but-sainted…(Saint O’Hare! What an oxymoron!) and i repeatedly heard, equality schmequality, we wemmyn are bettern you men and science says we dont even need you around anymore (Hail Darwin! Hail Sanger!). even then, they wanted the army and police disbanded, and shunned, (look what they did to the returning vets!). being better than men, they yet refused to demand wemmyn in the army, because military is evil, and then the war ended in the ‘nam and they claimed that was their doing. Historical viewpoints are always relative. I still wanta barff when i hear id rather be red than dead. And back in ’89 when Alan Stang reported that 90% of our press is owned by leftists, i remembered running across how Vlad Lenin ordered his fellow communists to buy-up the western press, and realised why i preferred Paul Harvey over Dang Rather and no longer wondered about the faces Cronkite made while reading some of the news. They seem to agree with Chappaquiddick Teddy; nobody deserves to have a gun except the army, the police, and my bodyguards, and im not so sure about the police. Y’know, ya dont always hafta confront them, if you step aside and wait for them to pass, you are positioned to take out their rear guard. Shall-issue (let alone constitutional carry) should be de rigueur, but jefferson couldnt win-over the federalists, especially with statements like, it is the duty of every gentleman to go about armed. This dident mandate open carry; pocket pistols were quite popular, and often tucked into the belt, holsters not being used much. Local anti-gun regs predate the western expansion, there being always an element who disdained toxic masculinity as a manifestation of the inherent violence of our society. we will never convert them; we can only get (force) them to agree we DO have a right to protect ourselves, in and out of our home; that violent crime must be dealt with; that nonviolent crime is still crime; that gunfree zones deserve Darwin awards, et.c.
Monsanto Barbie is a woman? Thought she was a ‘droid?
While I agree with most points, I spent an entire career in a STEM field, had as much if not better education, worked as long if not longer then the men, moved, changed, sorry but calling a bit of BS on you as well. There is still plenty of good old boys club that went and probably still goes on. If have not wslked the walk, do not presume to talk the talk.
Watts must know that any gaggle of Moms DEMAND! Action include a large percentage people who, biologically, were born as males and physiologically remain male. So on that basis alone this claim is as false as all the others she makes.
When one is an “ idiot “ , for lack of a better term ,
one will use anything to rationalize their behavior .
No Shannon, we don’t like you not because you’re a woman, but due to the fact that you are a useful idiot, freedom hating dumb hag.
And AOC believes men oppose her because they want to date her. The lunacy of Leftists, their disingenuous projecting, becomes more apparent by the day. You can’t fix stupid. 😜
Don’t know about you, but that one claim by AOC makes me want to laugh and puke at the same time. Simply can’t imagine spending as much as 15 minutes with her 1 on 1 in a personal situation like a date. I disagree with every (ignorant) word out of her mouth, I find the sound of her voice annoying and I don’t find her terribly attractive – sorry, but physical attraction is (still) something most people consider a requirement in a partner. Why exactly would I want to “date” her ?? Doubt I’m the only member of this club either.