S is for Superior Firepower

Well, it seems like just yesterday we found out about how North Carolina wants to issue concealed weapons to women who file for a restraining order - restraining orders which have been requested, in many cases, to get the husband out of the house, and deny him access to his children.

Now I see via an article on equalparenting-bc.ca that in Canada, if a man actually owns arms during a divorce, they will often be confiscated, and the ownership of the weapons will become grounds for a restraining order. So the right to bear arms, apparently only applies to women once divorce is in the air. I can't believe that this is restricted to Canada, and wonder how many men in other countries, along with losing their income, assets, houses and children have had their firearms confiscated, and how often US women have claimed that they were in fear for their lives, not for anything the man has done, but because the man owned a gun. (Of course, in the US, a woman doesn't have to give a reason she is afraid of her husband to get a Temporary Restraining Order, so maybe this doesn't come up as much.)

The article has some good quotes that echo things happening here in the states, such as the way women are often encouraged to misrepresent the facts so as to gain advantage during a divorce, and how whereas their lies are taken seriously, there are no repercussions if and when their lies are discovered:

Painting gun owners as unstable potential threats is part of a trend in nasty separation battles, explains one family lawyer, who asked not to be identified. "In an ugly divorce, the first thing you have to do is put the spouse in a bad light," she says. "A common question is, 'Has there ever been any sexual abuse of the children, has he ever threatened you, ever hit you, anything you're scared of, can you even insinuate that he threatened you? Then we can probably get him out of the house and have him look bad in a court battle." The ethics walk a fine line, she adds. "You don't say, 'Make it up,' but, 'Looking back, can you, in hindsight, say it may have been construed as a threat?"

And in the next paragraph:

"False allegations are not against the law," says [Ross] Bailey [executive-at-large with the Parents' Coalition of B.C.]. "You can lie on an affidavit and you don't get called on it like you do in criminal court. They can say, 'Yes he does have guns and he has threatened me.' The fact is, the more you lie, the more you get."

The article ends with a line that I would like help wrap up my post too, a quote that explains what is wrong with US divorce to a tee:

Whenever one makes a law [that] arms one group of people with a club to beat the other, that club invariably will be used.

In short women have been armed with a bigger club - in court they have overwhelmingly superior firepower - the confiscation of men's arms, and the issuing of arms to women is just a translation of that legal firepower into physical ordinance.

-M