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.