Progress

This from an old post on "A Cool, Wet Place," illustrating an excellent point--nothing equalizes communities like firearms. They are the ONLY weapon that does not discriminate on the basis of upper body strength, weight, and reach. They are the only option for people too diminutive, undernourished or outnumbered to put up a resistance to injustice. Disarming the helpless is the first step in commanding and controlling them with fear.

" "[Young, educated Afghan woman] Ms. Ellaha's younger sister, who had been pledged [to marry] another cousin, was facing the same treatment. After a week of being tied up, the two sisters agreed to marry their cousins. "So we went home," Ms. Ellaha added, "and escaped."

"The two sisters moved into a cheap guesthouse as they prepared to flee Afghanistan. But their family learned where they were hiding, and the police came to arrest them."

"The police subjected Ms. Ellaha to a mandatory virginity test. Fortunately, her hymen was intact, or she would have faced a prison sentence."

I didn't provide a link to this because after two weeks of being online, NYT content morphs into pay-per-view. It's from Kristof's 10/6/04 column "Beaten Afghan Brides." You can tell it's good from the dateline "Kabul, Afghanistan" whereas I'm betting if most of the other columnists were honest, they would have datelines like, "Sitting At Home, In My Underwear."

But back to the substance of the article. I have an idea that might provide women in poor, lawless, fundamentalist countries with a measure of security and equality. It would be cheap to implement, have immediate effect, and be applicable in a wide range of cultures:

Give women guns.

I say this as a registered Democrat, an Ivy League graduate, an idolizer of reason and culture, and a vegetarian. Reform of civil society, enforcement of human rights, separation of church from state; these are all great things. But of greater imminence to women in poor countries is the terribly pressing need to NOT BE BEATEN, RAPED OR MURDERED. And since police are usually doormats for whatever stone age tribalism is closest at hand, I say again: Give women guns. They don't have to form an army or even be very good shots. Yet all the same, the presence of armaments fundamentally changes the relationship of the rulers to the ruled."

[emphasis mine]

"The presence of armaments fundamentally changes the relationship of the rulers to the ruled."

That's why I'm pissed off at our President's administration for destroying perfectly good brass cartridges at cost to the government instead of letting civilians re-use them for peaceful, legal target shooting. He's making it clear that he doesn't think Americans should be trusted with firearms. Once you disarm a country, those communities of shooters that are necessary for the fostering of knowledge and practice that makes for civilian marksmanship disappear. And they don't come back easily when you need them. You effectively remove a set of survival mechanisms from your society's gene pool. You end up with a society of individuals who are just a little more helpless, just a little more reliant on expensive and unreliable specialists for their own survival. They are just a little more domesticated and a little less free--closer to sheep and farther from mountain goat. That might come back to haunt your children when their America is less prosperous and secure than it is today.