Reply #150: Ah, more abuse

[Euromutt]

But you go ahead and take that drippingly patriarchal tone when you talk about women and how they just aren't "comfortable" with those gun things.

Did I generalize? No, I don't believe I did, unless the word "some" mutated overnight to come to mean "all."

Confidence with firearms (which is not the same as complacency, I hasten to note) is a learned behavior. In my own case, it took repeated drilling by the Royal Netherlands Army to acquire it. If you've been pelted constantly by sensationalist mass media stories uncritically quoting advocacy literature about how guns "go off" seemingly by themselves, and present an unavoidable threat to their owners and those around them, then yes, you're going to conditioned to be uncomfortable around guns.

That doesn't just apply to women, but as it happens, we were talking specifically about women because you brought up your "male gun owners want to blame rape on women who won't arm themselves" hypothesis. Hence, I limited my comments to women. Some women; I've personally instructed several women (family, friends and complete strangers) in basic firearms handling and marksmanship, and they all came away having felt the experience to be a positive one.

As for the accusation that my tone is "patriarchal," I've known that word to be used too often to simply be an ad hominem meaning "you're male" for me to take it seriously any more.

For the rest -- I'm quite bored with pretending to believe that anybody didn't grasp anything I said the first time I said it.

Well, I'm glad you acknowledge that you had to feign belief that we didn't grasp what you said. Because the way I see it, we grasped it only too well, and you weren't too pleased about having the logical consequences of your position pointed out to you. You might (gasp!) have to re-examine your opinions; no, much better to just deny your opinions are what they are.