Gayle Trotter, the face of the far right’s ‘pro-guns, pro-women’

>>> we all remember gabby giffords testimony on wednesday, but the gun lobby also had a woman to speak for her side of the gun debate and she made quite an impression.

>> you are not a woman stuck in her house having to defend her children not able to leave her child, not able to go seek safety on the phone with 911, and she cannot get the police there fast enough to protect her child. and she's not used to being in a firefight. an assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon, and the peace of mind that a woman has as she's facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary looking gun gives her more courage when she's fighting hardened, violent criminals.

>> let's bring in msnbc contributor joy reid. so, joy, i want to ask you this question. if guns actually make women safer, then why does research suggest that actually women experience more violent deaths in states where there are more guns?

>> right.

>> why is it that women who are the victims of domestic violence are five times more likely to be killed in a home where there is a gun present?

>> yeah. i mean, and you're absolutely right. the logic that gail trotter was trying to put forward doesn't stand up to the fact that if you look at more than a half a million women every year are the victims of domestic violence and that a woman is much more likely to be killed by her partner than she is by a stranger. i mean, the scary scenario that she let out, maybe the nra is right, maybe the movies are the problem. she didn't cite a single case that actually was like that. all of these armed intruders coming in so you need a 30-clib magazine to defend yourself. she didn't talk about a case like that. the real violence against women is usually one-on-one violence in which a woman is more likely to be killed by a gun even if it's hers than to use it to defend herself.

>> the thing that struck me about the argument she was trying to make, nobody is saying that if you're a woman and you want to have a gun and go through legal procedures you can't have a gun. that's not -- she was trying to make an argument, sort of a fake argument. doesn't really exist. i guess she's suggesting thea r-15 is one that women specifically need because ths big around scary.

>> nobody is talking about taking away, confiscating, or banning handguns.

>> or saying you can't get a gun legally.

>> what people are saying is does that woman in the scenario she's describing need to be able to empty 100-round clip into this supposed fictional attacker? she couldn't name a single case where that was necessary unless a woman, of course, is going to war. then she had definitely need that kind of gun.

>> gayle trotter spoke vividly about the horrors of violence against women . she wrote opponents say it embraces gender stereotypes by casting women as victims and men as abusers. so in light of her testimony, i thought that was kind of an interesting take. let's take a 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.

>> so, okay, we shouldn't use stereotypes of women as the weaker sex but then go and use the stereotypes in a different setting? is that what we were hearing?

>> i think what you're seeing is somebody in gayle trotter who is essentially taking on this advocacy for political reasons. she has never been a gun control expert or advocate really before this month. it's the first time you have ever really heard her even writing or speak being this issue. and the organization she heads, its purpose is to make conservative principles more palatable, nor popular with women . so her idea is to sell ideas to women that will make them more conservative. and being against the violence against women act , which is something she has been, when she made that argument it was because it was cruel to men. so first here she's couching it as we have to guard against these scary men who are bigger than us and stronger than us --

>> and outnumber us.

>> and her previous argument was we have to protect the men from women who are going to lie about them being abusers.

>> a little consistency, wouldn't that be fresh? that would be so nice. it also strikes me part of the point is, you know, so she's saying, you know, women need this very specific kind of scary looking gun, but we know from some of the incidents that we've seen one person with a gun up against another person with a gun, i mean, that's not necessarily going to end very well.

>> not really. you're more likely to get your gun taken from you and used on you if you try to use a gun against this scary looking person. the one case she cited specifically was a case of a woman who defended herself and her child with a shotgun, not an ar-15, not a gun with a 100-round clip, against an assailant with a knife. and that is a much more common scenario and a scenario which would not be impacted in any way by the passage of the laws we're talking about.

>> do women need to accept the idea we need assault weapons or that we're weaker than men? is that the gist here? i know you're going to say no.

>> i think that's what gayle trotter is saying. she needs to get her arguments straight. if she's saying women are no weak that they need to have an assault weapon , first of all, she should cite some statistic has show that women have used assault weapons in the way she says. second of all, she needs to argue against herself because she argued for a woman being able to do exactly what she says with a shotgun which is legal and which would be legal for all time.

>> a lot of mixed messages for women .

>> kind of confusing.

>> we can fight in con bat but you need an ar-15.

>> i would love to know what she thinks about women in con bat. she hasn't been consistent and what she's doing is trying to sell women on conservatism.

>> thanks, joy reid.