Isn’t it refreshing to see a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual convention espousing female empowerment to loud applause?
In the case of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s speech last Friday, no, it is not. LaPierre, who said, “the one thing a violent rapist deserves to face is a good woman with a gun,” delivered an argument for women’s armed self defense that made a mockery not only of women’s rights, but also of conservative principles.
LaPierre was repeating a common trope among gun rights activists that easy gun access allows women to defend themselves against domestic violence. Never mind the various studies debunking this myth, including one showing states with higher gun ownership see more violence against women than states with lower gun ownership, even after accounting for confounding factors like urbanization and income. Even if it were true that guns kept women safer – or any of us, for that matter – his recommendation is offensively flawed on multiple levels.
First is the implication that it is the responsibility of the woman, not, say, the police, to defend herself from sexual assault. Interestingly, conservatives, the NRA included, used to oppose this kind of gun-toting vigilante justice. In the late 1960s, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the California-based Black Panthers, advocated individual gun ownership to allow blacks to defend themselves in a nation where police were reliably racist and racists were reliably violent. In response, California conservatives proposed a law banning loaded weapons from city streets. Then-governor Ronald Reagan supported the law, calling guns a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will,” and claiming that the law “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.” The NRA also supported this measure, as well as the gun-control measures passed at the national level in the ’60s.
So are we to take this new stance by the NRA as a sign of progress? Is the NRA’s advocacy for a woman’s individual right to bear arms a recognition of the entrenched discrimination facing women today? Simply, no. The Black Panthers called for armed self-defense because they could not rely on the government or the police to protect their rights. Had the government done more to protect blacks’ rights and the police force more equitably enforced the law, individual gun ownership would not have been necessary. Even the Black Panthers, after all, were not plotting a violent overthrow of the U.S. government; they were merely taking it upon themselves to enforce the law because the police would not do so.
That’s part of what makes LaPierre’s argument so offensive. If he were truly a women’s rights advocate, he would have used his podium in front of conservative leaders to promote fairer adjudication of rape accusations, for example, or equal pay for equal work. He and the other conservatives at the conference would be calling for greater resources to address domestic violence, not standing by as House Republicans slow-walked the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. He would have used his voice as an influential conservative to break down some of the structural barriers to a woman’s equality and protection under the law. If he truly cared about women’s rights, not gun sales, he would have used his position of power to solve the problem, not merely allow women to ameliorate their oppression through self-defense.
Let’s imagine, for a moment, LaPierre’s fantasy world, where every woman owns a gun and is willing to use it against her rapist. Given the ridiculous burden of proof on rape victims and how few convictions occur, are we really supposed to believe that the woman found standing over a dead man while claiming he did or seemed like he was going to rape her would, in most cases, end up with anything less than a murder sentence? I doubt it. But again, rather than addressing the huge barriers to rape convictions, or the victim blaming that goes along with it, LaPierre prefers throwing a few guns at the problem and hoping it will solve itself.
What LaPierre’s speech helps to expose is a contradiction between this argument for armed self-defense and conservatives’ emphasis on the rule of law. At least the 1960s conservatives were consistent in calling for both the rule of law and gun control – they just saw blacks as undeserving of full legal protection. Now, conservatives claim to support full gender equality, yet they refuse to ensure full legal protection and instead call for an extralegal, vigilante approach. Indeed, beyond just women’s self-protection, conservatives seem to see guns as a replacement for law enforcement. Armed school teachers keep kids safer, they claim, and concealed weapons keep our streets safer. Heck, if everyone’s armed, why have a police force at all? LaPierre’s argument sheds light on the anarchical undertone of pro-gun conservatism, which chooses individual protection over strong and equitable law enforcement.
All this is to say that Wayne LaPierre’s speech at CPAC was not about women’s empowerment, and it was not about conservatism. It was, plain and simple, a sales pitch for the gun industry. And that makes sense, considering the gun industry has given between $20 million and $50 million to the NRA since 2005. But don’t take it from me. Take it from then-NRA President Charlton Heston’s 1999 speech to the the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade organization representing the gun industry.
“Your fight has become our fight,” he said.
Yes it has.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons