Kimberly Corban may have more reason than anyone in America to own a gun. When she was a college student, a stranger broke into her home and raped her for two hours. Now, as one of the nation’s preeminent sexual assault advocates, she’s become the target of countless death and rape threats from gun control fanatics. Poised yet passionate, she exemplifies the best of the gun rights movement, forgoing the more bombastic and needlessly inflammatory tenor that some others (like, say, the Kent State gun girl) have adopted.
Naturally, she’s the perfect advocate for CNN’s Chris Cuomo to attack.
Only in America https://t.co/rPfsxGU8Gh
— Christopher C. Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) May 29, 2019
In the video Cuomo snarked on, Corban isn’t belligerently calling on Americans to arm themselves to prepare for civil war. She’s not even lauding limitless assault weapons or luxuriating in the gore of guns. She’s recounting how she survived being strangled and raped by a man who is currently serving life in prison, and how the Second Amendment empowers her to defend herself and her children from future threats.
Even if you’re in favor of restricting different kinds of guns or creating registry regulations, Corban is pretty much the worst target you could possibly focus your ire upon. Yet Cuomo cannot help himself.
Even so, he has a point. “Only in America” is self-defense — from both evil rapists and tyrannical governments — enshrined as fundamental “right of the people” and not a privilege. There are plenty of rational arguments to make in favor of (for example) increased mental health checks or gun-violence restraining orders. But to issue a glib dismissal of the Second Amendment as a whole, on the idea that Americans’ freedom to own guns is somehow bad because it is unique, is one of the more asinine, ineffective, and fallacious gun control arguments one can make.
After all, we’re also one of the few nations to have a drinking age of 21. That’s probably dumb. But then, we’re also one of the only nations to have our freedom of speech protected from censorship by the law. That’s indisputably an incredible thing. (Then again, maybe not for Cuomo — the U.S. Constitution doesn’t seem to be his strongest subject.)
From a purely pragmatic perspective, Cuomo’s dunk was just dumb. Just as pro-life activists probably shouldn’t mock pregnant teenagers as focal point of their campaigns against abortion, perhaps gun rights activists should lay off rape victims who get regular death threats as they seek to strip people of their ability to defend themselves.
