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‘Cosmopolitan’ Warns Women About Dating A ‘Gunsplainer’ [Video]

By Robert Jonathan
Published on: 05:23 PST, Feb 11, 2016

Cosmopolitan, the women’s fashion magazine, is launching a gun control initiative called “Singled Out” that, among other things, appears to discourage single women — the publication’s key demographic — from dating gun owners.

The Cosmo anti-gun violence campaign — which includes a video and an infographic — is a partnership with the Michael Bloomberg-funded gun control organization, Everytown for Gun Safety. The former New York City mayor (a Democrat turned Republican turned Independent) is reportedly considering a third-party run for president this year.

The right to keep and bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The premise of the campaign seems to be that women are more at risk from crazy ex-boyfriends (or would-be boyfriends) and menacing stalkers than muggers on the street or home invaders, and that owning a gun could make things worse. “In cases of domestic violence, the presence of a gun increases the risk of homicide by 500 percent. Several studies have shown that all too often, guns meant to protect women at home are turned against them,” Cosmo claims.

The Singled Out website argues that “lax gun laws put single women at risk.”

The magazine also highlights that a so-called boyfriend loophole exists in current law. “Abusive men who have formal ties to their victims — so if they are or were ever married, share a child with the victim, or live with the victim — won’t pass a federal background check for a gun. But that legal definition doesn’t include boyfriends or stalkers who don’t live with, haven’t fathered a kid with, or who aren’t married to the women they’ve abused.”

In the cringeworthy video that won’t be winning any Academy Awards this year, an unbelievably obnoxious male “gunsplainer” awkwardly tries and fails to pick up a woman at a bar. According to Cosmopolitan, a gunsplainer is “someone (usually, although not always, a guy) who buys into myths propagated by the gun lobby.” The Singled Out website adds that a gunsplainer is “a man who repeatedly and condescendingly blames the victim of a gun-related death or injury for not having a gun to defend herself.”

Gunsplaining is a variation of “mansplaining,” which has also been denounced by feminists.

Cosmo’s focus on the potential or ex-boyfriend with a firearm may seem somewhat off target, so to speak, because gun ownership among women is surging, while support for additional gun control regulations is plummeting among both genders.

Read the Cosmopolitan material and draw your own conclusions.

In a detailed infographic that gives women a series of questions to ask about their significant other’s gun ownership, Cosmo cities an expert who insists that alternatives to owning a gun for personal safety is to “run, call 911, or yell your head off” if you are a crime victim.

“Bringing up guns can be awkward, but as with abortion and STIs, you should know where your partner stands,” Cosmopolitan advises.

In a famous 2004 book called “Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America,” former Ladies Home Journal editor Myra Blyth accused New York City-based women’s fashion magazines like Cosmopolitan of peddling a liberal agenda to their readership.

PJ Media editor Liz Shield insists that gunsplaining-averse Cosmopolitan is downplaying some key data about gun control as it currently exists. “The rest of the [actual, not Cosmo] facts about gun crime are that the vast majority of criminals steal their guns or get them on the black market, and less than 10 percent of firearms are purchased privately without a background check. In fact, there are a record number of background checks being conducted nowadays, something you would think would be celebrated by the gun safety crowd.”

[image via Shutterstock]

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