{"id":159769,"date":"2022-02-16T12:41:42","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T17:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/digest\/?p=159769"},"modified":"2022-02-16T12:41:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T10:36:08","slug":"watts-pro-gun-activists-hate-us-because-were-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/watts-pro-gun-activists-hate-us-because-were-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Watts: Pro-Gun Activists Hate Us Because We\u2019re Women\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Watts:
Shannon Watts on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow. (Photo: MSNBC<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, wrote an op-ed recently on Elle.com<\/a> in which she argued that the entire gun debate really hinges on one issue: misogyny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo be clear, pro-gun activists don\u2019t disagree with us because they actually believe we want to take their guns away,\u201d Watts insisted.  \u201cThey hate us because we\u2019re women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anytime someone takes a multidimensional problem and reduces it to a single input or cause, you know they\u2019re full of it.  Take the putative \u201cgender pay gap<\/a>\u201d 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\u2019s the only way to explain it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a> that correspond to higher wages.  No, none of that matters.  Women make less because of the \u201coppressive patriarchy,\u201d they\u2019d have us believe.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s 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\u2019t they hiring women exclusively?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019d 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 \u201cprevailing rate.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEE ALSO: Shannon Watts on NRA Bankruptcy Hearing: Gun Lobby Is \u2018Broken\u2019<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hmmm, that doesn\u2019t pass the smell test.  For starters, and as at least one other gun writer noted<\/a>, the gun-rights movement isn\u2019t a monolith of \u201cevil white men.\u201d  As it turns out, a significant portion is women.  To give one an idea, women purchased 40 percent of the 21 million guns sold<\/a> in 2020, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019re doing so because of something else, not because of her gender.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n