I didn’t realize it was Karl Marx that said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”, but apparently it was. But being liberals here, we won’t reject the aphorism on that account. But what happens when history begins as farce? Well, it turns out that when Republicans are at work, it returns as failed parody.
Case in point is the farce we all witnessed last year when Todd Aiken and Richard Mourdock revealed to a startled world that rape cannot cause pregnancy. Lots of people disagreed, and the two gentlemen were relegated to that portion of purgatory to which Republicans are consigned when they say out loud what the rest of the Republicans keep to themselves.
So now the Republicans think they are going to get their revenge. A Colorado Democrat, Joe Salazar, speaking in favor of a gun control measure, responded to claims that it would prevent women from defending themselves from rapists by making the following inelegantly phrased statement:
“You don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop a round at somebody,” he said.
(via TPMDC)
Of course he apologized, being a Democrat, when the Republicans hypocritically fussed (suddenly they care about rape victims), but the major difference between what he said and what Aiken and Mourdoch said is that it is completely true. The last I heard rape is committed at close quarters, so close in fact, that once the crime is initiated, it’s not likely to be all that easy for the victim to grab her gun, let alone get in position to shoot it. So, unlike in Hollywood, in the real world a gun is likely to prevent rape only if the intended victim has plenty of advance notice, both in space and time, and one must wonder how often reliable notice is given by rapists. On the other hand, a trigger happy woman, like her male counterparts, might just jump to conclusions, shoot first, and ask questions later, which is precisely the situation Salazar was describing. If you’ve been following Kagro X’s gun related tweets, you have no doubt been astonished at the frequency with which people exercising their second amendment rights kill their parents, spouses or children quite by accident. It is, therefore, not at all a stretch to believe that a woman who suspects that odd looking male of intent to rape might judge him guilty and “pop a round” at him. After all, if she’s carrying a gun around with her she’s already got a bit of a problem.
Of course, the crazy people of our nation might respond that there is a more rational response to the possibility that an innocent man might be killed than making it harder for crazy people to get guns. For instance, we might just expand those “stand your ground” laws to allow white people to kill someone who is looking at them funny or who, in the case of women, they think might be contemplating raping them. That takes care of the problem without infringing on second amendment rights or giving non-white people any ideas. After all, it worked with Trayvon Martin.
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