More On Guns, God, Gays -- Minus G-d

A faithful BaT reader who never -- cough, cough -- leaves a comment sends along the full article Jonathan Rauch wrote for Salon back in 2000, an article which led to the birth of the Pink Pistols. The highlights:

Gay-bashing is a kind of low-level terrorism designed to signal that, whatever the law may say, queers are pathetic and grotesque. Beyond a certain point, therefore, law can't be the answer.

So it is remarkable that the gay movement in America has never seriously considered a strategy that ought to be glaringly obvious. Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible.

John Lott of Yale University has done extensive research on concealed-gun laws and finds that they reduce violent crime, especially among minorities, who are at greater risk, and above all among women, who are otherwise perceived as easy targets. Even if you disbelieve his research for crime in general, remember that gay-bashers are probably especially ripe for deterrence. They aren't career criminals or super-predators. More often, they are drunken or rowdy youths who decide to prove their manhood by picking on the weakest, most limp-wristed thing they can think of: a faggot.

If it became widely known that homosexuals carry guns and know how to use them, not many bullets would need to be fired. In fact, not all that many gay people would need to carry guns, as long as gay-bashers couldn't tell which ones did. Suddenly, what is now an almost risk-free sport for testosterone-drenched teenagers would become a great deal less attractive.

Won't bullets fly in the streets? Won't blood flow in torrents? If that were going to happen, it would have happened by now. Today almost half of all Americans (and 60 percent of gun owners) live in states that license concealed weapons; abuse of lawfully carried guns turns out to be vanishingly rare. Remember, to get a permit you typically need to register with the police, pay a fee, pass a gun-safety test, have no criminal record, not be crazy and so on. In aggregate, people with concealed-gun permits handle their weapons more safely than off-duty cops.

No doubt some gay-bashers would respond by adding guns to their own arsenals (as they are already doing anyway). Lott's research suggests, however, that the effects of any such "arms races" are more than offset by criminals' desire to steer clear of potentially fatal confrontations. That finding, one can safely guess, applies doubly to gay-bashers, for whom the whole point is to beat up on someone weak. The last thing they want is to risk their lives in a firefight with a trained opponent.

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I don't advocate a swaggering or confrontational attitude toward the American majority, or for that matter toward gay-bashers. Gays shouldn't play Dirty Harry. I also don't favor abandoning other efforts to mobilize law and public opinion against violence. Pink pistols are a kind of civil-rights measure, but they are fully compatible with other, more traditional kinds of civil-rights measures.

Still, the abiding fact is this: Homosexuals have been too vulnerable for too long. We have tried to make a political virtue of our vulnerability, but the gay-bashers aren't listening. Playing the victim card has won us sympathy, but at the cost of respect. So let's make gay-bashing dangerous. We should do that for our own protection. But we should also do it because we will win a full measure of esteem from the public, and from ourselves, only when we make clear our determination to look after ourselves.

You can read the whole thing here.

One final disclaimer: Absolutely do NOT purchase a gun without first receiving proper training from a qualified instructor. This does not include your brother-in-law who hunts deer on the weekends. Seek out a licensed instructor who has at least five good references. You can start your quest by contacting your local law enforcement agency. Owning a firearm does not make you safe from the bad guys. It does, however, give you the option of defending yourself and your loved ones if, God forbid, this becomes necessary.