Amanda Marcotte rails against the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative group making the case that guns are an “equalizer” that enhance women’s safety:

The fact of the matter is that more guns put women in danger. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center has found that states with more guns have more female violent deaths. Their research also found that batterers who owned guns liked to use them
to scare and control their victims, and would often use the gun to
threaten the victim, threaten her pets or loved ones, clean them
menacingly during arguments, or even fire them to scare her. The
Violence Policy Center’s research showed that in 1998, the year they
studied, 83 women were killed by an intimate partner for every woman who used a gun in self-defense. Futures Without Violence compiled the statistics
and found that guns generally make domestic violence worse, both by
increasing the likelihood of murder and also by creating situations
where abuse is more violent, controlling, and traumatic.

(Photo: Joanna Baginska, a fourth grade teacher at Odyssey Charter School in American Fork, Utah, is shown how to handle a 40 cal. Sig Sauer by firearm instructor Clark Aposhian at a concealed-weapons training class to 200 Utah teachers on December 27, 2012 in West Valley City, Utah. By George Frey/Getty Images.)