Athenae, Immoral Values, Kids Today

What’s the Best Way to Prevent Domestic Violence, Republicans?

Have schools teach girls to shoot their attackers:

Meanwhile, a bill under consideration in Maine — which has drawn support from Gov. Paul LePage (R) — would add an optional gun safety course, potentially paid for by the NRA’s “Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program.”The Maine bill sponsor Rep. Paul Davis (R) claimed this course would manage to prevent domestic violence, by giving would-be victims firearms training. “In these situations, these victims [of domestic violence-related slayings] did everything the law provided,” Davis said. “I have to wonder if they knew anything about guns. I don’t think they did. However, if they did and they wanted to protect themselves, what would have happened?”

While I am all about powerful girls, and not anti-gun in the abstract, and think if you’re teaching boys to shoot you should teach the girls as well, this is a big unsorted basket of socks that all have OH FUCK NO embroidered upon them.

First, it’s lousy time management. If you have a limited number of days on this planet, and the school day is even more limited, a much more expedient way to teach domestic violence prevention is to TEACH BOYS NOT TO HIT WOMEN. If all the focus is on how girls can defend themselves from male predators, all you’re teaching the boys is that girls are prey.

Teaching boys not to treat women like dogs, that grown-ups don’t behave like that and that rape and other types of assault are not hilarious or excusable no matter who the perpetrator is would go a lot longer towards making victims safer than would a firearm, because if you want to ensure nobody gets attacked, the only way to do that 100 percent is to make sure there are no attackers.

Second, making children paranoid about danger all around them is a pretty easy way to ensure they’ll actually go off half-cocked, and while we do an admirable job of scaring the shit out of the young’uns already, adding firearms to the mix helps not in the slightest.

A.

8 thoughts on “What’s the Best Way to Prevent Domestic Violence, Republicans?”

  1. But but but we already teach people that stealing is wrong and they do it anyway so THERE’S NO POINT TO TEACHING PEOPLE THAT CRIME IS WRONG YOU GUYS.

  2. Teaching guys not to hit women smacks of shoving PC down their throats, and you know how Republicans cry about having things shoved down their throats.

  3. Not a classic case of domestic violence (i.e., the perpetrator was her son, not her husband), but Nancy Lanza HAD firearms training.
    Don’t know about the woman in South Africa killed by the sprinter, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d at been to the range once or twice.
    What gets me is the sheer narrowmindedness of the winger crowd. It’s like the line about “for a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Their entire schtick is more guns, more guns, more guns. And the thing is, I really don’t mind individuals owning pretty much any or every gun they want…as long as they’re not running around killing people with them.
    I also think their obsession with and insistence on brandishing or fondling their guns in public is … kind of creepy. Who’d want to live in a world where everyone’s constantly thinking about guns?

  4. “you have a limited number of days on this planet, and the school day is even more limited, a much more expedient way to teach domestic violence prevention is to TEACH BOYS NOT TO HIT WOMEN. If all the focus is on how girls can defend themselves from male predators, all you’re teaching the boys is that girls are prey. ”
    I’d go one step farther: Teach all children that abusing the weak is not OK. Teach them that just because you find yourself with power over someone else, whether you’re just bigger/stronger/richer or happen to be “in charge” of them for whatever reason, that doesn’t mean you have the right to pick on them.
    Even if the weak are your younger siblings, loser nerds, skinny geeks, or poor kids or gay kids or black kids or brown kids or white kids, they are STILL KIDS, just like you, and they have the same rights and needs as you do.
    You don’t “get” to treat anyone like shit for whatever bullshit reason your parents tried to foist onto your worldview: not now, not in the future.
    Oh, wait: I think I just figured out why the wingnuts hate anti-bullying campaigns.

  5. Uh, I’m blanking on the name,but just a few months ago there was a?Kansas City? football player who shot his girlfriend. The girlfriend had a load of high powered firearms and regularly went with the shooter to shooting practice.
    And lets take them at their word. The guys who sit around and complain about how men getting in trouble just because the lady now says rape when she really like it. And how she said yes then but says rape now. Any idea how they are gonna react when the first graduate of this program blows away the guy who is beating her?
    Not to mention they are throwing away the idea of the defense being in line with the offense. What happens in the courts the first time the defendant uses force in excess of the threat?

  6. Any idea how they are gonna react when the first graduate of this program blows away the guy who is beating her?
    If the past is prologue, lots and lots of PMS jokes, and every halfbright comic with a webcast is gonna dust off his Lorena Bobbitt routine.
    A.

  8. Oh, so we should keep right on teaching girls it’s ok to get hit? We should keep on beating up a dead woman (Nancy Lanza) because the son who MURDERED HER also murdered 26 other people?
    GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

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