Republican-leaning but frequently libertarian-minded law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) on Guns and Gay Sex (click on "Download the document from Social Science Research Network"):
"[R]easonable regulation" often can be used to cover the true intentions of regulators who actually intend to extinguish or seriously undermine the right at issue. Courts are rightly suspicious of such possibilities in the context of other rights, such as free speech, abortion, sodomy, birth control, or the dormant commerce clause....
We should expect courts to treat the regulation of gun ownership with the same skepticism previously applied to the regulation of gay sex....
More. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide if the city of Washington DC can ban virtually all private (nonstate) possession of guns.
As The Guardian (UK) reports (but I couldn't find in this week's US coverage), one of the plaintiffs is openly gay:
Tom Palmer, one of six plaintiffs named in the original lawsuit challenging the Washington, DC ban, considers the case a matter of life and death. An openly gay scholar in international relations at the rightwing [sic] Cato Institute, he thinks that a handgun saved him years ago in San Jose, California, when a gang threatened him.
"A group of young men started yelling at us, 'faggot', 'homo', 'queer', 'we're going to kill you' and 'they'll never find your bodies'," Mr Palmer said in a March 2003 declaration.
"Fortunately, I was able to pull my handgun out of my backpack, and our assailants backed off."
Here's another take on why 2nd Amendment rights matter to gays.
14 Comments for “Is That a Pistol in Your Pocket…”
posted by ColoradoPatriot on
I heard on Fox News that there are roving packs of gays and lesbians who go around with pink pistols and harass good God-fearing Christians into accepting the gay lifestyle.
posted by Rob (a.k.a Xeno) on
Unfortunately I live in Canada, and handguns are a major hassle to acquire since they’re in the restricted category of firearms, and concealed weapons are a whole other issue. I’ll do more research on this later.
But I do think that every LGBT peep should carry a concealed handgun, be it a subcompact pistol or traditional revolver. It would certainly reduce incidences of gay bashings dramatically.
posted by ETJB on
Guns are for whimps! Give me my own concealed light saber or laser gun.
posted by ColoradoPatriot on
I usually just throw my AIDS at them.
posted by kittynboi on
I’ve along supported the idea of gays being armed. A few dead bashers will scare the ignorant teens and whiny drunken frat boys in to line. Seriously.
posted by Bam Bam, You\'re Dead on
It will either scare them, or remind them to carry guns themselves.
posted by Brian Miller on
Most gaybashers are cowardly chumps who want a monopoly on deadly force. Any chance that they could be at the retaliatory receiving end of such force, thanks to self-defense, renders them harmless — they’re too chickenshit to take on someone who could potentially seriously injure or kill THEM.
Leave it to government bureaucrats to decide that a quota of dead gay victims of crime is “a price we are willing to pay” to ban firearms. After all, few of the bureaucrats are themselves in harm’s way — so they can casually trade off the lives of others with no penalty to themselves.
For those who are in harm’s way, such as Kennedy, Boxer, etc., they can simply write in exemptions for themselves and their bodyguards.
Their safety is their top concern, whereas your life is a minor thing to be traded away to a basher in order for them to realize their political goals. Happy holidays!
posted by Alice AN on
Until, being outnumbered 7-1 they take possession of your gun and what started as taunting ends with you in the morgue.
I fully understand the sentiment to want to stand up to would be attackers – but more often than not without the training and cold blooded determination to shot to kill —–
Maybe it’s just me, but I have never found escalating a conflict to serve any good purpose.
Mandela fought apartied without any guns. He was jailed unjustly for 27 years and is easily the most respected, well regarded person in the world today. Precisely because of his dedication to non-violence.
IMHO resorting to guns is cowardly because standing up to people when you’re outnumbered and outgunned but never outsmarted or broken takes far more guts. That was something the drag queens of the stonewall riots understood very well and that we celebrate every pride – every year.
posted by Lori Heine on
“I heard on Fox News that there are roving packs of gays and lesbians who go around with pink pistols and harass good God-fearing Christians into accepting the gay lifestyle.”
That “story” was borne of the desire, on the extreme gay-hating Right, to keep gays and lesbians from packing heat and potentially defending themselves. It was designed to discredit the Pink Pistols, a GLBT gun club to which I happen to belong. Our motto, “Armed gays don’t get bashed,” doesn’t set well with some wingnuts — showing how shallow their support for the 2nd Amendment can really be when it might benefit someone other than themselves.
All the more reason, in my opinion, for us to pack heat.
As for all this blather about being armed somehow being wimpy or cowardly, for crying out loud, this is real life we’re talking about — not some endless Brad Pitt epic about manliness and swordsmanship and mythopoetic honor.
No unarmed people in history has long remained free. That is the cold, hard truth.
posted by Rob on
Until, being outnumbered 7-1 they take possession of your gun and what started as taunting ends with you in the morgue.
It depends on the situation, but if game theory is taken into account, most bashers would run away at the sight of a gun, and ergo the conflict is resolved. Besides I’ve heard of quite a lot of people ending up in the morgue without any defenses against gay bashers than those with defenses.
I fully understand the sentiment to want to stand up to would be attackers – but more often than not without the training and cold blooded determination to shot to kill —–
I agree that weapons training is important, and I do encourage every LGBT to take it. The determination to shot to kill a gay basher is quite easy when adrenaline kicks in. Don’t underestimate the state of fear.
Maybe it’s just me, but I have never found escalating a conflict to serve any good purpose
Yet in most real circumstances, a handgun involved tends to reduce conflict. Don’t forget that a handgun is an effective tool even if it is not actively used.
Mandela fought apartied without any guns. He was jailed unjustly for 27 years and is easily the most respected, well regarded person in the world today. Precisely because of his dedication to non-violence.
Apartheid and gay bashers are two completely different situations. Even though Mandela or Gandhi had no guns, they still had effective weapons in their respective situations.
IMHO resorting to guns is cowardly because standing up to people when you’re outnumbered and outgunned but never outsmarted or broken takes far more guts. That was something the drag queens of the stonewall riots understood very well and that we celebrate every pride – every year..
There’s no need for heroics or martyrdom when confronting a pack of wild savages.
posted by Brian Miller on
Until, being outnumbered 7-1 they take possession of your gun and what started as taunting ends with you in the morgue.
Ever been gay-bashed?
Looks like you haven’t.
After all, it’s a lot more than taunting.
I’d rather make my own decision about my safety than have someone like you, who has obviously never been targeted by anti-gay violence, make an uninformed decision on my behalf that compromises my safety to meet your “guns are icky” agenda.
Again, this is exactly the dynamic I was referring to earlier — my safety, heck, my LIFE are assets to be traded away in exchange for central planning lefty theories about violence. If I die, or someone else dies, it’s no skin off the nose of the people making the pronouncements, since they’ve never been a target of anti-gay violence.
And heck, if you take a baseball bat to the head, it’s just “taunting” dontcha know. You’re lucky you were only disfigured or crippled by the taunt — if you’d shot the hoods instead, you’d be dead because, well, that’s what cowardly groups do. . . they overpower armed men and risk getting holes shot in them.
Cannot get much more out of touch with the reality for gay people on the ground — which is precisely my point!
I have never found escalating a conflict to serve any good purpose
Yeah, just take the baseball bats, fists, and steel-toed boots like a man! Don’t escalate the conflict through self-defense. That will only make them angry.
If you do defend yourself from violence, after all, it’s YOUR fault that the assailants harmed you. Just peacefully submit to your maiming, file a police report, and accept your victim status. We promise we’ll pass a few laws to underscore how much of a victim you are, and if you do die after being bashed, we’ll have a candlelight vigil for you. Just don’t think you have a “right” to stand up for yourself — you must take one for the team in order for our utopian theories to rule the day!
posted by kittynboi on
Better yet, just sit down for a hunger strike sit in and do your best Gahndi impersonation. After all, give peace a chance!
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
I think the best example of how well de facto outright bans on guns and “hate crimes” legislation work is the fact that San Francisco keeps breaking its own records on homicide numbers and hate crimes each year.
posted by Hank on
I’m pretty much with Lori and Brian on this one. It would give me so much pleasure to watch a 20 something basher punk wet his pants when he realized I was armed.
Having said that though, it’s not a panacea. For example, a significant number of police officers killed while on duty each year are murdered with their own weapons. If a perp can overcome a well trained police officer and use his weapon against him, he could easily do it to me.
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/crime/20040916/4/1119