Good news - guns

Good news from CBS News:

Female gun ownership and the rise of fashionable "carrywear"
When former NRATV host Amy Robbins started training for a marathon four years ago, she felt nervous, she said, after a passing car slowed and followed her jogging down the rural backroads outside a Texas suburb.

Nothing happened, and Robbins called the episode "anticlimactic," although she soon realized she wasn't the only woman concerned about her safety when running outside by herself. When she started searching for clothes to help carry her gun, she said she couldn't find anything as cute as her Lululemons. "There's no functional clothing to help women carry around self-defense tools," Robbins told CBS MoneyWatch.

So Robbins founded Alexo Athletica in 2017, billing it as an athletic "carrywear" company for women who want to conceal guns on their person. While the brand's "Signature Pant" retails for about the same as your Lululemon or Athleta leggings, it also has nine pockets designed for your gun, knife and pepper spray — along with your keys and smartphone.

It's a controversial line of business, but a profitable one, according to Robbins, who won't share specific numbers but said last year's inventory was sold out for five months and sales so far this year are nearly triple last year's rate. Alexo's chic messaging to "carry with confidence," blending "carrywear" with female empowerment, has helped the brand connect with some millennial women who take to Instagram to show off their purchases.

A lot more at the site. Here is an excerpt from this 2007 essay by Marko Kloos:

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

And of course, the great Robert Anson Heinlein:

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

And there is always Dr. John R. Lott's book (Amazon link): More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition (Studies in Law and Economics)

Kind of hard to argue the numbers. Not suggesting that people just go out and get whatever catches their eye - you need to visit a gun range, sign up for an introductory pistol class and take it from there. The class will teach you basic handling, the four laws*, and you will get the chance to fire many different kinds of guns so you can figure out what ones you like (me? all of them!)

*Four Laws are from Jeff Cooper:

1. 1. All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
   2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. (For those who insist that this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.)
   3. Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target. This is the Golden Rule. Its violation is directly responsible for about 60 percent of inadvertent discharges.
   4. Identify your target, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything that you have not positively identified.