MzNeko

...sigh...

No, the idea is to get into the habit of looking around where you are to see what's available, NOT carrying stuff around.

Yes! This part right here!

Sheesh, I thought it was a fairly simple idea to grasp...

Vandrare

if worst comes to worst, and your pinned with no weapon and no limbs free.... i'm a big fan of the ol' teeth. get stuck in to the guys arm or whatever you can get and i bet he'll let go of something to try and dislodge you.

or also ofcourse, the headbutt to the bridge of the nose - but for that its best to use the sides of the forehead where the bone comes to a little apex.

Theli

No need to get mad, perhaps you can bring your whole kitchen with you, or you could stay in the kitchen all day where you're safe.

openeyes

I have never carried a gun or have felt that having one would make me feel safer. I worked in a "questionable" area of Minneapolis for several years and within the St Paul city limits (but in a nicer neighborhood) for the past eight years. I go to downtown Minneapolis on occasion, often as the only adult and visit my friend in a borderline area in south Mpls. I've been single for a number of years and have travelled to major cities with only my kids as companions. I can't say that I've never felt fear, but it's really been very minimal. I've had a hard time relating to some women legislators that were involved in the recent adoption of a law that expanded our abilities to carry a gun who touted it as a women's safety issue since they were from rural Minnesota (which has a pretty low crime rate.)

I would be more afraid of a gun's power to hurt or kill in a situation other than stopping a crime.

MzNeko

Feh, obviously you've never experienced my cooking.

Goober

BAHAHAHAHA! You immediately reminded me of the monty python 'self defence against fresh fruit' sketch. Here's a sample, see the full transcript here :

Sargeant (John Cleese, shouting throughout): Right sir! Good evening, class.

All (mumbling): Good evening.

Sargeant: Where's all the others, then?

All: They're not here.

Sgt.: I can see that. What's the matter with them?

All: Dunno.

Chapman (member of class): Perhaps they've got 'flu.

Sgt.: Huh! 'Flu, eh? They should eat more fresh fruit. Ha. Right. Now, self-defence. Tonight I shall be carrying on from where we got to last week when I was showing you how to defend yourselves against anyone who attacks you with armed with a piece of fresh fruit.

(Grumbles from all)

Palin: Oh, you promised you wouldn't do fruit this week.

Sgt.: What do you mean?

Jones: We've done fruit the last nine weeks.

Sgt.: What's wrong with fruit? You think you know it all, eh?

Palin: Can't we do something else?

Idle (Welsh): Like someone who attacks you with a pointed stick?

Sgt.: Pointed stick? Oh, oh, oh. We want to learn how to defend ourselves against pointed sticks, do we? Getting all high and mighty, eh? Fresh fruit not good enough for you eh? Well I'll tell you something my lad. When you're walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after you with a bunch of loganberries, don't come crying to me! Now, the passion fruit. When your assailant lunges at you with a passion fruit...

All: We done the passion fruit.

Sgt.: What?

Chapman: We done the passion fruit.

Palin: We done oranges, apples, grapefruit...

Jones: Whole and segments.

Palin: Pomegranates, greengages...

Chapman: Grapes, passion fruit...

Palin: Lemons...

Jones: Plums...

Chapman: Mangoes in syrup...

Sgt.: How about cherries?

All: We did them.

Sgt.: Red and black?

All: Yes!

Sgt.: All right, bananas.

(All sigh.)

Sgt.: We haven't done them, have we? Right. Bananas. How to defend yourself against a man armed with a banana. Now you, come at me with this banana. Catch! Now, it's quite simple to defend yourself against a man armed with a banana. First of all you force him to drop the banana; then, second, you eat the banana, thus disarming him. You have now rendered him 'elpless.

Palin: Suppose he's got a bunch.

Sgt.: Shut up.

Idle: Suppose he's got a pointed stick.

Sgt.: Shut up. Right now you, Mr Apricot.

Chapman: 'Arrison.

Sgt.: Sorry, Mr. 'Arrison. Come at me with that banana. Hold it like that, that's it. Now attack me with it. Come on! Come on! Come at me! Come at me then! (Shoots him.)

Chapman: Aaagh! (dies.)

Sgt.: Now, I eat the banana. (Does so.)

Palin: You shot him!

Jones: He's dead!

Idle: He's completely dead!

Sgt.: I have now eaten the banana. The deceased, Mr Apricot, is now 'elpless.



Okay, I'll stop being off topic now.

Kalvan

Interesting thread. Sorry I didn't see it sooner.

Bree:
It is advisable to have it as an option available to those women who have the correct mindset to use the option. Self-preservation is the most basic of rights; nothing comtemptible about it.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. (If you want peace, prepare for war.) You are less likely to be attacked if the person initiating the attack has a reasonable expectation of a violent response.
Only about 5% of the population avails itself of the ability to carry a firearm concealed in public, but if they do then the other 95% reap benefits from it in terms of lower violent crime rates (although property crimes, like “cold” burglaries, tend to increase). More people have firearms in their homes. The “problem” of rape is unlikely to disappear. From what I’ve read, roughly .5% to 1% of adult males are predators. So unless you have a reliable method for detecting aberration in advance and then effecting a psychological rewiring of these men the problem will always be there.


Daleth:
Depends on the jurisdiction. Some places require you to retreat out of your house. In Texas, at night, you can shoot a burglar in the back as he’s running away down the driveway. In places like Boston, Chicago, NYC and Washington DC the law generally does not even allow you to have a gun in your home.
It doesn’t say that.

Pyrrho:
No, you have to be aware of your surroundings at all times. Avoidance is your best defense and a gun is only to be used as the absolute last resort. Some firearms schools teach an alertness color code. White – You are paying no attention to your immediate safety. Most people go through most of their lives in Condition White. Yellow – You are aware that “IT” can happen any time or place. You are aware of your surroundings – who is near you, what can be used for cover, etc, but you have identified no specific potential threat. If you are going to be armed, this is the state you try to maintain. Orange – You have identified a potential threat and begin to take action to enhance your tactical situation – retreating or moving behind previously identified cover, getting your hand on your gun, issuing a challenge if appropriate (Stop! Don’t come any closer!), etc. Red – you are being attacked and are in combat.

One thing that having the gun does for you is that, knowing you can resort to it in extremis, you are less likely to panic. You can stay cool and assess the situation. However, the gun is no magic talisman warding off all danger and doubt. It is just a tool which gives you an option in a lethal situation that you otherwise do not have. To get the most out of it you need to be trained, but it is not exactly useless without a lot of training. (A couple of years ago a local 82-year-old woman was targeted as the 5th victim of a serial rapist. The previous victims were also elderly women living alone who had been attacked in their homes at night. In each case the guy had stayed for hours, raping them repeatedly. This woman had bought a snub-nosed .38, which is one of the hardest pistols to shoot well, and gotten no training. As the guy kicked in her back door she emptied the gun at him, hitting him 3 times. The attack stopped because he turned away and left.) For the best chance of success you should be trained with the firearm, practice realistically with it, and be aware of basic tactics and applicable laws. As a counterpoint, in another recent incident here two police officers (read: “trained professionals”) got spooked by an unarmed suspect they were chasing and expended 31 rounds at a distance of 6’ without hitting him once, except for one bullet that ricocheted off the concrete up into his leg.

Kalvan

Vandrare:
I don’t think anyone is advocating “giving” women anything. I advocate not stripping them of the option of possessing the only effective means of defense against a lethal threat.
Obviously, I think you are wrong!
And where your violent crime rate has increased since your gun ban was passed.
You make it sound like a bunch of wild-eyed women are going to be running around shooting anything that moves. I know a number of women who have gone armed for years without ever drawing the gun. I know another who simply had to display the firearm for the problem to cease. I know others who were being stalked and were unarmed and frantic because of the threat (one had awakened with the guy on top of her in her bed and was badly beaten driving him off, which she only did with the aid of her adult daughter). Those women regained some sense of control over their lives after acquiring a firearm and training.

No, it is her responsibility to preserve her life, not his (or theirs). He made his choice to put himself into harm’s way by electing to attack her. When you take chances, sometimes you get caught short. The skydiver’s chute doesn’t always open.

Some 75% of women who are murdered in this country are killed by a current or previous significant other. A high percentage of the recent murders in my relatively crime-free community have fallen into that category. Not a rape situation per se, but the gun is useful for stopping lethal felons in general. One woman was beaten to death with a telephone; she had no way to stop her husband. Another was shot to death in an office building while she was on the phone to the police and a score of her co-workers hid under their desks. No one is responsible for protecting you all the time except you.

She is not passing a death sentence on her attacker; some 80% of handgun wounds are survived. She is shooting to stop an immediate lethal threat to her person. Regardless of whether he intends to kill her after using her like a piece of meat, in this day of AIDS and other incurable life-threatening STDs I would definitely construe rape as a lethal threat.

In many areas they are as restricted as guns. There is also the problem that a non-lethal response to a lethal threat tends to be suicidal.

Kalvan

enfant terrible:
True. The vast majority of firearms are never used to shoot anyone.

False. This is presumably based on the thoroughly debunked Kellerman “study”. He sorta forgot to mention that in about 98% of DGU’s (defensive gun use) no shot is fired. You cannot measure the effectiveness of guns by the body count anymore than you can measure the effectiveness of your local police by their body count.

True. Murder around here.

Depends on the individual. Training and practice goes a long way to offset this. We’re talking about a relatively small % of the population who would carry it on the street. There are a couple of hundred million guns out there in the US right now and not a lot of instances of residents using them irresponsibly in their own homes and businesses.

I suppose this is theoretically possible, but the statistical probability is extremely low. The accident rate has been dropping steadily for decades.

Health benefits, sure, and even if a person has a gun I would advise them to learn some basic hand-to-hand techniques to give themselves time to deploy the gun in some situations. But martial arts are hardly a sure thing, and if we can’t get them to spend an hour or so on the range every month and 10 minutes of dry-fire every couple of days to master a handgun, how are you going to get them to make the enormous commitment of time and money necessary to master a martial art? And then there are those of us that are old, fat, disabled, etc. for whom it is simply out of the question.

Kenneth:
Trust me, they exist. Really.

See remarks about alertness and no guarantees above. You can always create a “box” that no one can escape. Not the norm. And if you didn’t even know he was there, how’d he know you had a gun?

Again, if she was attacked before she knew what was happening, why would he be looking for her gun?

Queen of Swords:
It’s hard enough to get guns to shoot every time as it is. Introducing things into the gun that can cause it to not fire is generally not a good idea. It’s rather telling that the police do not use them, and that they have been exempted from a law passed in Maryland requiring “smart gun” technology in the future.

Agreed.

Justice

I’m coming into this discussion very late, but after reading the posts, I'd like to add a few cents more...I’d like to first thank you, Kaiser Soze, if you’re still around. You were jumped on for saying that you do not tolerate some of the most vicious, violent, base criminals on the planet, and their heinous crime, and I’d like to say that I agree with you and how you think they should be dealt with.

I think the emotions you expressed are perfectly normal, natural reactions of civil-minded people, even those who never knew or worked with rape victims. More people should feel like you do about rape, esp. more men. Someone called you “an emotional guy” as though that’s a weird reaction to have had in response to the issue of rape…Well, hell, I think anyone who is not emotional when discussing rape is messed up. It should be something that sends people who value the right to physical security into a fury.

Somewhere along the way in history, people started concerning themselves more with the rights of criminals instead of the rights of victims. As far as I’m concerned, the moment a person fundamentally violates the basic human right of another individual to live in personal security (free from violence), by inflicting unprovoked violence that can do serious bodily harm—as in a rape in this case—that person forfeits his own right to life.

It’s not an unreasonable demand that society makes on its members to not violate one another’s bodies by rape. It's basic: respect for human dignity. And society should NOT tolerate such serious violations of people’s basic rights. To not punish rapists seriously is to imply that rape isn’t all that serious a crime (I believe this was said before). It is. It violates a victim so fundamentally, and on so many levels, that it should be a capital crime. There is no justification for rape—EVER. It’s never an accident, and it’s never defensible (as killing someone in self-defense is). It is torture. It is an evil act perpetrated by evil people, who should be eliminated from society for the grave harm they’ve caused, and for the protection of others.

As for the question of using a gun to defend oneself from rape...
as long as anyone (female or male) is trained in the proper use of a firearm and has no criminal history, I see no justifiable excuse for denying a person that form of self-defense. I think a requirement of gun ownership should be knowledge of how to safely use a gun and how to be accurate with it-- an attempt to protect the rights of others to live in safety (by not getting shot accidentally as bystanders) and protect law-abiding citizens’ right to self-defense. It is the responsibility of a gun owner to properly store and maintain a gun so as to protect children, if the owner has any.

Many people try to claim that the technical and dangerous qualities of guns are reasons to deny women the right to use them—an insult to women’s intelligence by saying that women aren’t competent enough to learn how to handle and shoot a gun and make wise decisions about carrying and storing it. They also play up the "it could be used against you" line. A common saying on gun ranges is, “The only thing worse than getting shot is getting shot with your own gun.” Honestly, I’d rather get shot with my own gun—hell, I’d sooner shoot myself with my own gun—than be raped, if I knew that was the only alternative. People should have no moral qualms about killing a rapist in self-defense, although obviously, as this forum shows, many do.
If a person doesn’t want a gun for self-defense, fine. That’s the decision of that individual. If another person does want that option, it should be available.

As a woman who owns a gun for self-defense, I think women especially should avail themselves of this option b/c it is one of the most efficient means of defending oneself, when available.* I say when available, b/c as was previously stated in this forum, a woman (or a man for that matter) can have a gun, carry it on her person or in a purse, know when it is appropriate to use it, and be an expert at shooting it accurately, and still not be able to use it in her defense if the element of surprise is working against her. BUT—I think women should make that option available to themselves b/c if there is any opportunity at all for a woman to get to her gun during an attack, it could be an an invaluable one, and more useful than any other tool at hand.

A woman can take a billion self-defense classes (martial arts, whatever--a good idea) and still be overpowered. The average female is no match, physically, for the average male, unfortunately (I recall reading a story of a female martial arts state champ being raped). So why should a woman put herself at a disadvantage? Why not at least know she has the best means possible of stopping an attack (given that she can get to the gun)

Many assailants can probably withstand punching, a kick to the groin, and other attempts at defense. And pepper spray, while it might work, requires more accuracy than a gun, since it needs to go into the eyes to be effective, and it also requires close combat. Sure, some rapists probably won't stop at even shots of small caliber rounds, but it's less likely to happen with a standard, run-of-the-mill 9mm. gun or larger caliber.

I resent having to feel a need to own a gun, but I feel it's necessary, and I advocate arming women to the teeth for their protection. I'm not paranoid as some people claim women will be if they need to carry a gun with them everywhere they go. But evil is a fact. And this form of evil is common. And I know that a gun is not a guarantee, but I consider it like insurance. I have it, and tho I hope I never have to use it, I hope it will cover the claim I might one day have to make on it.

I consider myself to be a physically fit woman of slightly above-average strength (as far as women are concerned), but I’m not naïve enough to think I’m going to be able to overpower a man and wrestle him to the ground to make my escape. And although I am a gun owner, I’m also not naïve enough to think the gun will undoubtedly be my savior. However, I feel a hell of a lot more comfortable knowing I have the best means available to me to protect myself, if need be. To me, the gun represents a better chance of defense. B/c, even if it's in a purse and knocked away from me or just not within reach for whatever reason, say, in my residence, if I'm able to break away and manage to get to it, I'm in a much better situation not to be raped.

Of course, cunning, and intelligence and speed can come into play, but if I were ever unfortunate enough to be in a situation in which I had to escape, I wouldn’t use my intelligence and speed to run a few feet to my kitchen for a knife or anything else that would require me to be within arm’s reach of a rapist, if I had a better weapon at my disposal. I’d run to my loaded gun, knowing it is the most effective means of stopping an attack (I doubt a rapist would be quite as convinced of his lost opportunity had I grabbed a knife that he'd probably assume would be easy to get from me).
Maybe I wouldn’t have to use the gun. Maybe I would. But a rapist should never doubt that I will shoot him dead if need be to prevent being raped. (Obviously, if a gun wasn’t available, I’d use whatever would do the job.)

I’m also fully aware of the fact that if I ever did use my gun to protect myself, I would find myself in court so fast it would make my head spin. I would lose a lot of time and money and sanity, to defend my justifiable use of a lethal weapon. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take, b/c I'm not willing to lose my dignity, health, or life at the hands of rapist. There are too many people who think that is somehow more moral for a woman to be brutally violated by rape, as long as she lives (and remembers the horror of it), than for her to prevent or stop that by killing a vicious, violent criminal. The "go easy on the rapist" line is absurd. I don't get it.

Personally, I'd like to thank anyone who's ever killed a rapist/would-be rapist. I think the state should pin a medal on them for justice served (to the extent that it could be. If a woman first suffered the torture of being raped and only then managed to kill the rapist to stop him, that wouldn't make up for what he'd done to her. No earthly punishment can be just enough for a rapist).

There’s one last point I’d like to make. Some people advocate banning all guns, except from police, and while I can understand that they might mean well, that’s a horrible idea. I think people who advocate this idea fail to understand that the people using guns for illicit means probably do not get those guns through legal channels. Criminals have guns. Banning guns will only keep them from law-abiding citizens who want them for self-defense. Criminals will still have banned guns. And even if a rapist did not have an external weapon (besides the one between his legs), I’d never relinquish my gun, b/c being at a biological disadvantage as far as physical strength goes, I’ll never willingly put myself in hand-to-hand combat with a rapist who’s always got his weapon. In my own self-defense, I am perfectly justified in killing the dirty piece of shit that would try to violate me, and so is every woman. It’s ridiculous that people try to make women act mercifully towards rapists who have every intention of perpetrating such a heinous crime against them. Rapists aren’t merciful. No mercy should be shown to them for their unprovoked, abhorrent attacks.