http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23643/pub_detail.asp

A Girl's Guide to Guns
By John R. Lott Jr.
Posted: Thursday, January 5, 2006
ARTICLES
New York Post
Publication Date: January 1, 2006

What should a woman do when attacked by a criminal? Should she
behave passively? Use pepper spray? A gun?

Most people hope they'll get lucky and never be attacked. For
those who want to think ahead, there is Paxton Quigley's new
book, Stayin' Alive.

It turns out that pepper spray may not do you a lot of good when
it is raining or snowing. A woman is just as likely to disable
herself as the attacker when it's windy or when using the spray
indoors.

Knives and baseball bats are particularly problematic, because
women have to get very close to their attackers to use them, and
male criminals--that is, most criminals--tend to be much stronger
physically than their female victims. When it comes to physical
contact, women generally lose those fights.

The advantage of a gun is that it is ideal for keeping the
criminal far away from the victim. And the victim isn't
responsible for restraining the criminal, as police officers are
when arresting suspects. A woman simply wants to keep the
criminal away from her.

There have been a lot of good books lately exploding the myth
that guns endanger people's safety. (And at least one very
notable movie, Larry Elder's Michael & Me, devastatingly tackles
many of the false claims in Michael Moore's Bowling for
Columbine.) Quigley's book covers a lot of ground, such as the
myths about personal defense, when it is appropriate to use
lethal force, whether there are any risks to firing a gun while
pregnant (apparently not), how often children are killed by
accidental gun shots (very rarely) and how one goes about
choosing the best gun for a particular individual's needs. The
book answers these questions from a woman's perspective.

What works defensively for men doesn't always work for women. As
Quigley points out, women who used a gun to resist an attack were
2.5 times more likely to escape uninjured than those who behaved
passively. Guns aren't as beneficial for men. They are only 1.4
times more likely to escape uninjured than those who behaved
passively.

The book includes real-life examples of defensive gun use and
offers academic research on the millions of times each year that
people use guns defensively. These good-news stories help Quigley
illustrate how women actually react in life-threatening
situations. And she also does well explaining what women should
know before choosing a gun.

The book could have gone further debunking common misperceptions
about guns. Take the claim that "you're more likely to shoot
yourself or a family member than kill an attacker." This study
assumed that whenever anyone in a gun-owning home was killed by a
gun, it was that gun that caused the harm. But academics have
found that at least 86 percent of the time, that assumption was
wrong--and most of other cases were suicides.

While recent polls show that more households own guns after 9/11,
there is still a lot of fear and uncertainty about guns, which
may keep people from doing what is best for their family's
safety. Quigley's book cuts through a lot of that unjustified
fear.

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at AEI.
Related Links
More Guns, Less Crime
The Bias against Guns