Your study notes that more gun makers are showing women as competent users in their ads instead of objectifying them. Why the shift?
[Oregon State Professor Michelle] Barnhart: They have shifted tactics largely in response to changing regulations. The gun industry made several attempts to reach women over the years. For example, in 1989, Smith & Wesson launched its LadySmith handgun line and advertised it in magazines like The Ladies Home Journal. At the time, there were more restrictions on handguns than we have today, and the industry’s marketing efforts didn’t lead to large increases in sales like what we’ve seen in the last few years.
Regulations started to change dramatically in 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinterpreted the right to bear arms as an individual right to self-defense. It seems that as states began to expand consumers’ legal right to have, carry, and use handguns for self-defense, the industry seized on the opportunity to sell the idea of armed self-defense to what was still a relatively untapped market of women. After a few years of experimenting with sexualized ads that didn’t correlate with increased sales to women, the industry now seems to have landed on an advertising idea that works: showing women as competent and serious gun owners.
— Greg Lickenbrock in How the Industry Shifted Tactics to Sell More Guns to Women
Breaking news: Men and women are different.
CrossFit Girl Arm Wrestles Scrawny Man!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbBIK8CzCYo
Reeeee!!!!! Gun companies are sexist and hate women!!!!!
Reeeeee!!!!! Gun companies view women as a viable market share of competent users!!!!!!
The real sin is that more women might stray from the Democrat plantation of perpetual victimhood.
Yes, their real fear.
“The real sin is that more women might stray from the Democrat plantation of perpetual victimhood.”
The real sin is that more Black folks might stray from the Democrat plantation of perpetual victimhood.
The real sin is that more Latinos might stray from the Democrat plantation of perpetual victimhood.
The real sin is that more LGBT? might stray from the Democrat plantation of perpetual victimhood.
The real sin is that more Union membership might stray from the Democrat plantation of perpetual victimhood.
“the industry now seems to have landed on an advertising idea that works: showing women as competent and serious gun owners.”
Its a good thing they did because it probably saved lives.
In 2023-2024 – of the women attacked by perpetrators for purposes of violent rape : 38% of the women were armed with firearms and employed DGU (i.e. brandishing or firing), all escaped serious injury and rape. 3% of the women not armed with firearms managed to escape (i.e. fighting or fleeing or barricading in residence) but sometimes with some form of injury, however, did escape serious injury and rape. All the rest were not armed with a firearm, some were armed with other means of defense (i.e. pepper-bear spray/Byrna/edged-sharpened/blunt-object/hand-feet-hand-to-hand-combat, fleeing, barricading, fighting), and all these without a firearm suffered serious injury AND rape (no matter if they used other means of defense or not).
” Regulations started to change dramatically in 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinterpreted the right to bear arms as an individual right to self-defense.”
Ugh. From the ratification of the BoR to the Reconstruction Amendments it always has been an individual right.
It was true then, and it’s still true today:
“Nobody ever raped a .38.”