20 Feb Gun & Gown

“If you’ve got a person that’s raped because you wouldn’t let them carry a firearm to defend themselves, I think you’re responsible,” State Representative Dennis K. Baxley of Florida said during debate in a House subcommittee last month. The bill passed.

 

The passage excerpted above is from an article titled ‘A Bid For Guns on Campuses to Deter Rape’ in the Wednesday, February 18, edition of the New York Times. This nugget of wisdom from the esteemed Rep. Baxley is followed by another gem from Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore: “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.”

 

Gentle Reader(s), I know not quite where to begin. But begin I must.

 

Sociopolitical commentary is not typically the province of Your Humble Narrator’s blogtational forthcomings (there have been exceptions) but when my eyeballs clapped upon these bogglers of contemporary American philosophical maunderment I felt the urge to offer semi-informed commentary becoming somewhat overwhelming. Irresistible, as it were.

 

First of all, it has become a persistent drumbeat from deep in the far right Bush: The solution to the problem of violence is… MORE GUNS! Yes, Gentle Reader(s), the natives are restless and their prescription to make our beloved country safer is for everyone to arm themselves to the incisors. It used to be that the solution to gun violence was more guns, but now it’s being promoted as the solution for violence in general.

 

But allow me to address Representative Baxley’s somewhat mindbending assertions regarding sexual assault. His logic (if logic is the right word for it) seems to imply that through some process—divine intervention, perhaps—only the potential victims of sexual assault might be in possession of firearms. And should the unfortunate occasion come to pass that such potential victims find themselves sufficiently threatened, they would be able to avail themselves of their weapon of choice and dispatch the threat in a considered, concise and timely fashion. Presumably, through the same aforementioned process of divine intervention, the perpetrators of said threat would not be similarly armed and an all-out gun battle would not therefore ensue. Seems reasonable.

 

Representative Baxley’s thought processes, such as they are, apparently seem to proceed along a line of reasoning wherein the problem of sexual assault should be dealt with via application of deterrent force. Deadly force. That sexual violence might be addressed as symptomatic of a larger problem—possibly extending from the acculturation of young American males to treat women as objects, subject to their desires to extract sexual gratification regardless of any disinclination to participate willingly—is strictly secondary to the gratification of packing heat.

 

Furthermore, the honorable Rep. Baxley is of the opinion that should any sexual assault take place in the absence of a firearm (wielded, preferably, by the victim) that blame for the assault should be laid at the feet of those of his fellow legislators too lily-livered to withdraw any impediment that might prevent their constituents from arming themselves to such extent as they might see fit. Makes sense.

 

And then, for the feminine perspective on the matter, there’s Assemblywoman Fiore of Nevada. In concord with her colleague in the Sunshine State, Assemblywoman Fiore feels that providing ‘hot, young little girls’ with firearms would do wonders to improve campus safety. It does, of course, stand to reason that where guns go safety inevitably follows. Just ask the family and friends of Veronica Rutledge of Blackfoot, Idaho. Veronica Rutledge is the woman who was shot dead by her two-year-old son in a WalMart in Coeur d’Alene last December. Perhaps Justin Reynolds and Monique Villescas might care to opine. They were both shot and wounded by their 3-year-old son in an Albuquerque motel room earlier this month. With a single bullet, no less! And Ms. Villescas was eight months pregnant at the time. Helluva shot, kid.

 

I don’t mean to make light of the matter. The tragedies are too numerous and way too horrifying. But apparently Assemblywoman Fiore feels that if a few hot, young little co-eds blow out the brains of a few hopped-up frat boys the sexual assault problem will solve itself forthwith. Assuming that the quote attributed to her by the Times is accurate, that is, in fact, what she is advocating for.

 

So here’s to you, Representative Baxley and Assemblywoman Fiore. God bless you both and the sovereign states of Nevada and Florida and the Second Amendment to the Constitution and every misguided interpretation thereof. And God help the rest of us.