There’s a lot of disagreement on how many people use a gun defensively every year. All estimates show that they’re used to defend life far more often than to take it, but depending on who you ask, you’re likely to get a different number.
But we do know that some people use guns defensively. Sometimes, those people are good, innocent folks under threat from someone.
It’s usually not someone who saw something they shouldn’t have, either. That’s pretty rare, happening more in movies than in real life.
The folks I’m talking about are people like stalking victims. They know someone out there probably wants to hurt them. They often get guns to protect themselves. Yet a lawmaker in Minnesota has the most idiotic take on why there shouldn’t be an exception for these people.
“Rep [Kaohly Vang] Her just said on the House Floor that we shouldn’t allow women to keep guns in their own homes for self-defense because they aren’t trained well enough,” MN House GOP War Room posted Thursday on X, along with a video of the DFL politician stating her objections to any exceptions to her gun storage bill for women who have been victims of stalking or who have petitioned for a restraining order.
Her reasons? Existing “exceptions” apply to people she says are “experts at using firearms. This amendment would give exceptions to those who are not…”
By “experts,” she means “Only Ones,” members of law enforcement who give daily examples of why they don’t have special qualities that automatically make them more trustworthy than the rest of us. Predictably, the restrictions “do not apply to … firearms … owned or possessed by a peace officer … while the officer is engaged in the performance of official duties…”
In case anyone is still unclear on how that appellation came to be, meet the DEA agent who shot himself in the leg while holstering his firearm after telling a classroom full of children “I’m the only one in this room professional enough … to carry this Glock 40.”
It’s fair to ask why there should be exceptions on rights for anyone, or more to the point, why there should be infringements in the first place. Then again, “justifying” those as being “for the greater good” has proven to be one of the more effective ways of swindling the witless out of their rights and getting them to demand stripping them from everyone else. And if there’s one thing Her has shown herself adept at, it’s using logical fallacies to sway a critical mass of non-critical thinking Democrats.
I find myself in agreement about exceptions as a general thing. I tend to favor the rules applying to everyone, if for no other reason than to make sure that everyone understands they don’t get a pass and hopefully oppose this nonsense.
But the reasoning here, if you can even call it that, isn’t that the rules should apply evenly.
No, it’s that women who are actually under some kind of threat aren’t trained enough to not lock their guns up at night when they might actually need them. First, that’s a bold statement. I know too many women in the gun community who can kick my butt nine ways to Sunday on any course of fire you care to name. They’re instructors as well, passing along both raw information and wisdom to an untold number of students every year.
To say that women “aren’t trained well enough” in such a blanket manner sure sounds an awful lot like the kind of thing a misogynist of a bygone era would say about women doing “man’s work.”
Beyond that, though, at least most mandatory storage bills–they are not safe storage no matter how proponents try to frame them, as illustrated here–only require one to store a firearm if it’s not under the individual’s control. The idea being that if you’re carrying it or have it right next to you, then unauthorized hands aren’t going to grab it.
Minnesota’s does not. In fact, it expressly says, “A firearm is not considered stored, kept, or left under this subdivision during the period that it is under the direct physical control or reach of the person.”
Which is why people were suggesting an exception for people with restraining orders or who were the victim of stalking.
Vang’s comment, however, makes one thing very clear. She doesn’t trust anyone but the police with guns except for her and her buddies, and while she’s later quoted with the “I’m a gun owner but…” thing, it’s also clear that she thinks anyone else is a menace.
When the bodies start dropping because women can’t get to their guns in time, it’s on Vang’s head. Especially this “they’re not professional enough.”
As quoted above, we all remember the DEA agent quite well. He was the only one professional enough to handle that “Glock 40” right up until he shot himself in the leg. She considers him proficient enough, but not someone like a Julie Golob.
Makes perfect sense.
