title: From gun politics to self-defense politics: a feminist critique of the great gun debate.
abstract: This article calls attention to a problematic binary produced by public debates surrounding gun rights and gun control-namely, that women must choose armed self-protection or no self-protection at all. I argue that both anti- and pro-gun discourses, drawing on and reproducing race and class privileges, use assumptions about women's physical inferiority to further their agendas. I highlight how both sides have used guns as the proxy for self-defense and conclude by calling for a shift in public discourse to focus on the broader question of the right to self-defense rather than the narrower question of gun rights.
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Jennifer D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Carlson
mesh_terms: D034462:Dissent and Disputes; D005260:Female; D019513:Feminism; D005389:Firearms; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics; D011902:Rape / Q000517:prevention & control*; D012449:Safety; D014754:Violence / Q000517:prevention & control*; D014930:Women; D016387:Women's Health; D014933:Women's Rights
keywords: gun control; gun rights; self-defense