Gun Rights Lesson #244 – Guns Have More Rights Than Women

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope.

“As A Woman, I Hope That One Day I Have As Many Rights As A Gun!”

These words were written on a sign and held aloft by a marcher at one of the Women’s Marches that took place right after Trump’s inauguration. The sentiment they express is utterly farcical, but since someone took the time to put marker to cardboard (and artfully apply some red paint), I imagine that someone doesn’t agree with me. I might have suggested Poe’s Law, but there’s little doubt here that no sarcasm was intended. The sign and sentiment have been roundly mocked on the Internet since they first appeared, but in case you missed it, I offer my own deconstruction, one which also illustrates the reality of gun rights.

Consider, first, that a gun is a piece of property. As such, it has no rights, nor can it have any apart from the rights of its owner. If the comparison between gun rights and women’s rights is to be addressed, we’d have to consider women property as well. Meaning, of course, that women would be men’s possessions. Radical feminist delusions aside, this blows the meme up at the outset. Still, lets play along.

Lets anthropomorphize guns, just to make the analogy work in our non-chattel-slavery society. Lets ignore the fact that, without a human operating it, a gun is just an assembly of metal, wood and/or plastic, as incapable of doing harm (or doing anything) as a rock sitting in a garden bed.

Thus, were a woman granted the same “rights” as a gun, she would:

• have to undergo a background check before being permitted into society.
• lose her right to exist, i.e. be executed, should she commit any felony.
• have no right to enter any establishment that chose to debar her.
• have no right to enter a United States Post Office.
• be restricted from many public spaces, including sports stadiums, schools, government offices, and the like.
• have various physical attributes restricted. Too small? Too big? Too strong? Too bad.
• be debarred from dressing up or making herself up as she wished.
• require a permit to travel through most of the nation.
• require training or education before being permitted into society.
• be absolutely prohibited, if she is of a certain physical type, from entering parts of the nation.
• face widespread discrimination for being black.
• face widespread discrimination for being sexy.
• have to be packed in a box, with handcuffs and a gag, to travel on airplanes.
• have to be handcuffed and gagged to travel through many major cities, unless she can obtain a permit, issued solely at the whim of a government official.
• have to pay money for the right to exist in society.
• have to be handled through an intermediary if she wanted to change husbands in certain parts of the country, or across state lines in more parts of the country.
• have limits imposed on her rate of speech, her typing speed, her driving speed, her running speed, and countless other aspects of herself that men deem excessive.
• face widespread bigotry, bigotry exacerbated by a hostile press that routinely mischaracterizes and demonizes her.
• be blamed when others misuse her.
• have millions of people believe that she should only exist to service law enforcement and military personnel.
• have millions of people believe she should not even exist in society.

Now do you get the utter inanity of this essay’s thesis? These “rights” are less than the most oppressive societies of the world grant their women.

It is an unfortunate reality that visual depictions tend to be granted a greater baseline presumption of validity than written or spoken words. I’ve referred to this as meme-orializing. Thus, a photo of a placard saying something inane has a far greater chance of being noticed and repeated than the simple writing or uttering of that inanity. And, thus, we are motivated to devoting time to exposing that inanity.

Take a moment to consider the above list in the context of gun rights themselves. These are the restrictions and prejudices that gun owners face in American society. It is a fact that our gun rights are, excepting our near-dead economic liberty, the most “abridged” of all our rights as Americans. So, before you go off half-cocked (pun intended) to propagate the nonsense that guns have more rights than women, or the delusion that guns are unregulated in society, take a moment to educate and inform yourself on the subject.

So:

Gun rights lesson #244: Guns are not people. They have no rights. And, if women were treated as guns are, they’d be treated as badly or worse than women are in the most repressive societies on Earth.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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