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Why Owning Guns is Better Feminism Than #metoo

Published

5 years ago

October 16, 2019

Pictured above: Hollywood actress demonstrating her bona fides to talk gun policy.

Two years ago, actress Alyssa Milano popularized the #metoo social-media movement, and within days that nugget of Internet slacktivism had not only gone viral, it had become virtually synonymous with feminism. As an actual feminist, and not someone who plays one on TV, it’s irritating to see a movement based on ensuring civil rights for both genders being turned into a game of online “gotcha.” What really has me going all Angry Humorless Feminist Mode, though, is that the same people who delighted in #metoo seem determined to eliminate the most practical way for a woman to protect herself: gun ownership.

It was only last month Milano got busy with her favorite kind of feminist activism–Twiddling her Twitter–to demand that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) meet with her to “eliminate gun violence.” Obviously, Milano believes that her performance on the set of “Charmed” qualifies her to parse the meaning of the Second Amendment…but that’s fairly typical of Hollywood. Her hypocrisy in that she herself owns two firearms while trying to limit their availability to others is also fairly typical of Hollywood. Just as sadly typical is the fact that if she and other anti-gunners get their way, women will be worse off than they’ve been since before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock.

At the heart of the matter is the following question: Is it more important to feel safe, or to be safe? Common sense would seem to dictate that the latter should win out every time, but since I’m writing this and you’re reading it, common sense isn’t common among feminists such as Milano (and our current crop of Presidential nominees). Don’t get me wrong; feeling safe is great and I recommend it highly, but feelings are not the same thing as facts. Here are the facts:

The fact is that being catcalled, obnoxious as it is, is orders of magnitude nicer than being physically menaced.

The fact is that there is no hashtag campaign that will stop your ex-boyfriend from kicking down your door.

The fact is that the police cannot–and have no obligation to–protect you from that creep who follows you home from the store.

The fact is that a restraining order is just a piece of paper…a piece of paper that includes your current physical address (just in case your stalker didn’t have it already).

The fact is that when the chips are down and your life is on the line, owning and carrying a gun is hands-down the best way to even the odds against an attacker.

Most importantly, the fact is that “feeling safe” can actually make you less safe, if that sense of security is false—and if the #metoo campaign taught us anything, it’s that our sense of security is false far more often than we’d like to contemplate. (How many of the people named and shamed by #metoo claimed to be feminists, again? I quit counting at about half-past Harvey Weinstein and a quarter to Kevin Spacey.)

In the mid-Nineties, feminists of the time had a series of protests called “Take Back the Night.” It was exactly what it sounds like—an affirmation that women have the same rights to exist in public after sunset that we do before. Which is nice and all, but this movement took place against the backdrop of America’s crime rates peaking at unprecedented levels while our President and Congress were enacting the “Assault Weapons” ban. The people who suggested that guns would probably be more useful to take back the night than a candlelight ceremony were derided as insane, sociopathic racists. (Yes, some things never change.)

But those of us who chose to ignore the name-calling and arm ourselves anyway discovered some very interesting things. We learned that much of what we had been told about guns and gun owners was false. We learned that women are every bit as capable behind a trigger as men (if not more so, according to the coaches I’ve spoken to). Finally, we learned that taking responsibility for our own safety is far more empowering than demanding that the government do it for us. I am woman, and I don’t need to roar—my SIG will do it for me, should that become necessary.

Twenty-five years later, and new anti-gun faces are popping up with the same tired old rhetoric and hypocrisy. During the October 15 Democratic candidates’ debate, the virulently hoplophobic Kamala Harris said the following: “People need to keep their hands off women’s bodies and let women make decisions about their own bodies.” Kamala, I couldn’t agree more. Why don’t you start with yourself and all the other gun-grabbers by getting your mitts off my Second Amendment and and letting me decide how to protect my body?

And as for you, Alyssa Milano, you can keep your #metoo. I’m going #Me2A.