With the current focus on safety for women I find it even more difficult to believe that the NGOs, SAPS, Safety and Security and Government are all blissfully unaware of Orlando Florida, which solved its rape epidemic problem. 

In 1966 Orlando Florida had a rape epidemic, they did not declare the town rape free or crime free, set up safe zones, suggest women lay back and enjoy it, beg and plead or have busy bodies handing out pamphlets telling women to stay at home for their own safety.  The police (considerably more enlightened and pro-active than the SA version) set up a training program to train some 3000 women with firearms, encouraging them to purchase their own if they did not own a firearm.  This training program was much publicised in the media.

What were the results?  The next year rape fell by 88 percent in Orlando (the only major city to experience a decrease that year); burglary fell by 25 percent.  Not one of the 2,500 women trained actually ended up firing her firearm; the deterrent effect of the publicity sufficed.  Five years later Orlando's rape rate was still 13 percent below the pre-program level, whereas the surrounding standard metropolitan area had suffered a 308 percent increase.

The cost of this intervention, which gave the phenomenal results, was insignificant.  No other intervention has shown greater promise of drastically reducing rape and other crimes.

At least 40,000 other women of Orlando derived a direct benefit and owe a great gratitude to those brave women who undertook training and accepted responsibility for their own safety.

While the results of Orlando are subject to much debate the results of other similar publicised training programs for armed merchants sharply reduced robberies in stores in Highland Park, Michigan, and in New Orleans; a grocer's organisation's gun clinics produced the same result in Detroit.  More recently the removal of gun control laws and relaxing or removal of right to carry laws has seen a revolution in crime reduction.  The USA now has the lowest crime rate in its recorded history.

What can be said of any organisation that promotes gun control and advises women not to fight back and give everything including rape to criminals?

Then “The impact of the abuse of weapons on women and children in abusive situations remains an issue of deep concern for the department. Of particular alarm is the increase in femicide (the killing of women by their partners) and family murders in South Africa.”  Both femicide and family murders are social problems that simply cannot be prevented or reduced by attempting to drain the lake of “illegal” firearms or disarming citizens.  Nor is there any evidence to suggest that firearms are a causative factor.  In fact the thoroughly refuted MRC study on femicide shows from the data that the most heavily armed segment “whites” have the lowest rate of femicide.  This is a typical example of NGO’s junk science outcomes based research which has been grasped with open arms because it suits a political agenda. 

It is sad indeed to see the SAPS and Dept of Safety and Liaison accept the 16 days of activism campaign as one that could do any good at all.  Born in the cesspool of UN sanctioned George Soros funded propaganda hate groups of Oxfam, IANSA, GFSA, GCA, MRC and hundreds of other groups who have the sole aim of total civilian disarmament as a priority and mission.  Women and children are incidental to these organisations and are simply an emotional crutch to use to gain their objective.  That a firearm is a womens most effective form of defense is denied yet that is the strength of firearms.  Physical fitness and brute strength are not a factor.  It is a sad day indeed that women and children are advised to go toe to toe with bare hands and wrestle 100Kg rapists and violent criminals who will rape and kill them without remorse or thought.  It is an even sadder day that Government wants to see it happen and is doing everything in its power to ensure that it does.