shirkers2018dirsanditan:

nyaanarchist:

puttingherinhistory:

nyaanarchist:

puttingherinhistory:

“The average prison sentence of men who kill their women partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their male partners are sentenced on average to 15 years. This is despite the fact that 86% of female offenders kill in self-defense, while males are most likely to kill out of possessiveness (82%), abuse (75%) and during arguments (63%). Women are eight times more likely than men to be killed by an intimate partner.”

— Fact Sheet on Battered Women in Prison (no stats given for GQ and trans* people). (via sonnywortzik)

This is something that scares me with current pushes for gun control. White men already never get in trouble for owning guns illegally, and anyone who thinks cops are suddenly going to start going after them if gun control laws get more strict is a fool. But women, especially women of color, who defend themselves from their abusers, are going to go to prison more often and face longer sentences because of it.

I’m sorry but there’s something really insidious about using these statistics to say “this is why we shouldn’t have gun control” when really these statistics if anything back up exactly why we need stricter gun control. The biggest groups lobbying for stricter gun control are predominantly made up of women, especially women of color specifically because of statistics like this. Gun control is a feminist issue because of the high rate of women, especially women of color, who are murdered by intimate partners.

It’s eerily similar to NRA talking points to say “well people are going to have guns and be criminals anyway so we need relaxed gun laws so people can at least defend themselves” when we see in countries with strict gun control that gun control actually works and lowers rates of gun homicide. There’s a reason the U.S. has staggeringly high rates of gun homicide and that’s because our laws are stupidly and irresponsibly relaxed.

If you relax gun control they’re more likely to fall in the hands of a man murdering his intimate partner than a woman defending herself from her abuser. It’s more likely going to result in dead women than dead abusive men. We already have irresponsibly relaxed gun control laws and we just see the bodies of women piling up at the hands of abusive men and not the bodies of abusers dying from women defending themselves.

Using women of color defending themselves as a “gotcha” to advocate against stricter gun control is actually just going to result in more women of color dying.

It feels disingenuous to call any concerns about how gun control would actually be implemented in the US “insidious,” a “gotcha,” or the same as NRA rhetoric, especially given the major pieces of gun control legislation have been pushed by the NRA because black leftists started arming themselves.

We can say “oh well in the UK has strict gun control and their murder rate is this” and “oh well Finland has loose gun control and their murder rate is this” until we both turn blue, but any talk about gun control that doesn’t center the fact that the United States is a racist patriarchal police state is worthless.

Cops already don’t help abuse victims. They already completely ignore when women are being abused and seek legal recourse, even when they have restraining orders, even when the men already have threatened those women with illegally owned weapons. Cops are more likely to be domestic abusers than anyone else.

The abusive men already have guns, often illegally, and nothing happens. I cannot see a future where any gun control legislation passed takes guns out of the hands of abusive men, and thinking cops are going to suddenly start caring about abuse victims and not just weaponize this to further hurt marginalized people seems absurd

arguing that guns are going to suddenly be an ally to women’s (or people of color’s) cause rather than the harm it’s always been is what’s absurd.

for starters, the NRA does not support any form of gun control, so i’m not sure where you are getting the information for that initial assertion. in response to black gunownership, which is the overwhelming minority of gun ownership (1), the NRA simply pushes more gun ownership (2). the NRA functions essentially as the lobbying arm of gun manufacturers – gun manufacturers only goal to sell more guns (3). they do not support policies that would decrease gun ownership. furthermore, when the NRA has weighed in on the racial politics of gun control, it has only been to attempt to manipulate the narrative to benefit gun manufacturers – they do not make any considerable effort to defend black gun owners (4), but this you probably already know. moreoever, the assertion that marginalized people and those victimized by gun violence should defend themselves lest they be suckers is also a key part of NRA rhetoric, which is what you are parroting here (4). there is no law governing self defense that will protect marginalized people defending themselves with a gun (5) (6) (and the above information), and even the assumption of gun ownership for black people often results in our slaughter. not to mention, notions of armed self-defense only bolster racist and sexist violence, not deter it (7) (8). the l but you know this. so why be irresponsible and suggest we all arm ourselves? it hasn’t worked in the past, and black people slaughtered during peaks of racial violence were often armed. it doesn’t make a difference when you are surprise-attacked or ganged up upon, and defending yourself might lead to your death anyway. many black luminaries who extolled the virtues of armed self-defense were assassinated themselves, or were otherwise targeted by the state in a way that a gun cannot defend them against (see: malcolm x, fred hampton, bobby hutton, assata shakur, and the dozens of black panthers killed by police despite being armed, among others) (9) (10) (11). but gun ownership during reconstruction, the turn of the 20th century, the the inter- and postwar era is nothing compared to today. gun ownership now (and in many ways then) was a flashpoint of male and white supremacy – again, the vast majority of gun owners are white and male (1). and gun violence is an issue for women and racialized people.

homicide by firearm is the number one leading cause of death for black men and boys ages 1-44 (12). domestic homicides have been increasing steadily over the past decade (13). studies consistently show that the present of even a properly stored firearm dramatically increases your risk of being murdered, and that more guns make us less safe (14). if we are going to meaningfully challenge capitalism, sexism, racism, imperialism, and militarism, it is not going to be by upholding an industry and mentality that causes global harm and instability (15) and that feeds on violent, male and white supremacist, and imperialist hegemony (16)

armed resistance is very nice on paper, it’s very inspirational and empowering from a distance. but history requires us to read beyond the headlines, so to speak. as does the present.

(1) https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/

(2) https://csgv.medium.com/we-know-the-nras-history-yes-it-s-racist-17a3a5188dcb

(3) https://vpc.org/investigating-the-gun-lobby/blood-money/; https://www.npr.org/2018/03/13/593255356/how-americas-gun-industry-is-tied-to-the-nra

(4) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/the-nras-catch-22-for-black-men-shot-by-police/570124/

(5) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/is-there-racial-bias-in-stand-your-ground-laws/

(6) https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2020.30610

(7) http://cardozolawreview.com/defending-white-space-self-defense/

(8) https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/228598901.pdf (pgs. 627-629 in particular)

(9) https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/hutton-bobby-1950-1968/

(10) https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19691229.2.55&e=——-en–20–1–txt-txIN——–1 (page 10)

(11) https://www.aaihs.org/black-radical-activists-and-the-dangers-of-the-police-state/; https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2020/history-for-black-lives/sayhername-black-women-state-sanctioned-violence-resistance/

(12) https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2016/nonhispanic-black/index.htm

(13) https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/10/01/domestic-killings-in-2020-already-surpass-last-year; https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/domestic-violence-victims.html; https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/domestic-violence-victims.html; https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/experts-increase-in-domestic-violence-homicides-is-directly-related-to-pandemic/531-e4b1b3b9-a6ad-41e2-81c1-2dc66ad61ece; https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/early-numbers-suggest-domestic-violence-homicides-may-be-rise-around-n1243735

(14) https://www.safewise.com/resources/guns-at-home/; https://violence.chop.edu/types-violence/gun-violence/gun-violence-facts-and-statistics; https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/do-guns-make-us-safer-science-suggests-no/; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-stop-more-crimes-evidence-shows/

(15) https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/08/killer-facts-2019-the-scale-of-the-global-arms-trade/; https://www.un.org/disarmament/convarms/register/; https://www.dw.com/en/crises-are-fueling-the-global-arms-trade-sipri-report/a-52688298

(16) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0312-z#Sec5; https://inthesetimes.com/article/settler-colonialism-second-amendment-guns-white-supremacy-slavery; https://newrepublic.com/article/146190/brutal-origins-gun-rights