Gayle Trotter Argues for Arming Women in Home, Not on Battlefield
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BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Gayle Trotter, a tax attorney and only woman on a five-member panel at a gun violence hearing in the Senate Wednesday afternoon, argued women need guns to physically defend themselves from larger, stronger male criminals.
“For women, the ability to arm ourselves for our protection is even more consequential than for men because guns are the great equalizer in a violent confrontation,” Trotter said. “As a result, we protect women by safeguarding our Second Amendment rights. Every woman deserves a fighting chance.”
In June, Trotter published an op-ed that was about attacking the idea of allowing women to fight in combat, but took issue with a woman’s role in the military in general.
“There are real reasons to avoid putting women in combat. Many young single women are specifically recruited to serve in our military,” Trotter wrote. ”When you mix young women with fit young men, pregnancies are to be expected.”
Trotter went on to argue that a woman’s role as a mother was more important than a position in the military.
“Do the principles of women’s ‘liberation’ embrace jailing mothers for refusing to leave their kids behind with strangers? If a woman is not free to care for her child, what kind of liberation does she have?” Trotter asked rhetorically.
Critics seeking to preserve the ban against women in combat have argued that women are inevitably less fit than their male counterparts.
Trotter’s testimony Wednesday followed that argument and continued to equate women with moms.
“If we ban these types of assault weapons, you are putting women at a great disadvantage, more so than men, because they do not have the same type of physical strength and opportunity to defend themselves in a hand-to-hand struggle,” Trotter told members of the Senate Wednesday. “And they’re not criminals; they’re moms. They’re young women. And they’re not used to violent confrontations.”
Trotter did not mention the biological or emotional problems former presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich referenced in their arguments against women in combat.
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