Citation

Carlson JD. Violence Against Women 2014; 20(3): 369-377.

Affiliation

University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1077801214526045

PMID

24686128

Abstract

This article calls attention to a problematic binary produced by public debates surrounding gun rights and gun control-namely, that women must choose armed self-protection or no self-protection at all. I argue that both anti- and pro-gun discourses, drawing on and reproducing race and class privileges, use assumptions about women's physical inferiority to further their agendas. I highlight how both sides have used guns as the proxy for self-defense and conclude by calling for a shift in public discourse to focus on the broader question of the right to self-defense rather than the narrower question of gun rights.

Language: en