Shannon Watts blasted for claiming pro-gun women don't exist

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Shannon Watts really is the gift that keeps on giving.

It never fails to amaze me how much absolute crap she spews with absolutely zero pushback from anyone outside the gun-related media.

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Her latest screed claimed that the Second Amendment community was really nothing but a bunch of misogynists. I took issue with that.

I’m not the only one.

Theresa Inacker, writing over at The Truth About Guns, did too.

Shannon Watts, founder of the Michael Bloomberg-owned Moms Demand Action anti-gun rights org, recently published an op-ed in Elle Magazine, called Research Shows Gun Violence And Misogyny Are Closely Linked. It’s Time To Make Sure Abusers Can’t Buy GunsWatts opined, “To be clear, pro-gun activists don’t disagree with us because they actually believe we want to take their guns away. They hate us because we’re women.”

The misogyny is all yours, Shannon.

Why does Watts talk about women like we aren’t even in the room? Or as if we don’t have a seat at the table? She literally acts as if we don’t exist. It’s hard to be much more misogynistic than pretending half the populations doesn’t have a voice when very clearly, we do.

For example, The DC Project–Women for Gun Rights works to highlight the diversity and rising demographic of female gun owners through ongoing advocacy because gun rights are women’s rights.

The DC Project is the countervoice to anti-gun civilian disarmament operations like Moms Demand Action. The DC Project’s members show up in state houses across the country, defending gun rights as human rights.

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Inacker is right to be outraged.

After all, Watts essentially argued that she doesn’t exist. She’s far from the only example, either, of someone Watts ignores.

Look, I can believe Watts gets hateful messages. If you put yourself out there on politics, you’re going to get them too. I sure as hell have and I’m far from unusual.

But the best reading on what she wrote was that she looks at the messages she gets and thinks that’s the totality of an entire movement that she’s working to destroy.

She can’t fathom that women are in that movement because they’re not the ones saying those nasty things about her.

In other words, I think Watts is in such an echo chamber because she’s shut herself off from anything but that kind of stuff. After all, I’ve been blocked by her for years on Twitter and I never said the first misogynistic thing to her. A lot of pro-gun folks report being blocked by her as well, which means she’s essentially cutting off anyone who criticizes her.

As a result, she thinks people like Inacker don’t exist, nor do a lot of other women exist who vehemently support the right to keep and bear arms.

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Furthermore, do you know what those women tend not to get? Nasty messages from pro-gun men telling them they don’t belong in the movement. They might get one occasionally, they’re more likely to get misogynistic hate from the anti-gun side.

Funny, that.

Of course, all of this assumes that Watts isn’t drastically inflating the nasty messages into a bigger proportion of the criticism she actually gets, which isn’t a safe assumption to make.

Frankly, women like Inacker are vital to the Second Amendment movement, as is The DC Project. After all, if Watts and other anti-gunners are all that anyone ever sees on the gun issue, it becomes easier to take her claims seriously.

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