Every time I suggest here that maybe a few more rational handgun laws would be a good idea, I get flooded with responses from gun nuts (sorry, I mean concerned second amendment supporters; no, wait, I do mean gun nuts) asking how I would feel if I saw my wife or daughters being raped (these people spend a lot of time thinking about rape), or they post an article about some grandmother in Detroit frightening off intruders with her assault rifle. It comes down to two opposing and seemingly irreconcilable approaches: the gun people seem to think that the solution to gun violence is for more people to have guns; the idea being that, once everyone is armed, no one would dare actually pull the trigger. Call it the mutually assured destruction, or MAD principle. On the other hand, silly people like me have this crazy idea that a better way to reduce gun violence is to, you know, reduce guns.
So I have a modest proposal, a compromise that I think both sides can agree on: let’s just arm only women.
This meets the gun supporters’ repeated concern about the safety of their wives and daughters. As for my side, it’s not a perfect solution, but let’s be honest: what do George Zimmerman, Adam Lanza, that guy who shot that other guy in the movie theater, that guy who shot that other guy in WalMart, all have in common? Yeah, they’re dudes. Clearly, the problem is dudes with guns. So let’s make all guns with biometric triggers that simply won’t fire if held by someone with a y chromosome. After all, if women can’t be trusted to make their own reproductive health decisions, why should men be trusted to manage their own penises? I mean guns.