Wendy Davis On Gun Violence: ‘Women Are Uniquely Vulnerable’

Former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis knows that the fight against gun violence cannot be won without women, and in an op-ed for Cosmopolitan published on Thursday, she wrote about why women “shouldn’t shut up” about the pervasive issue ― and how they can work to fix it. 

Davis opened the op-ed with a sampling of this week’s news headlines, about the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs that left 26 dead, as well as other shootings in Plano and North Austin.

The Sutherland Springs and Plano mass shootings both involved domestic violence in some capacity.

“While gun safety may not seem like a feminist issue at first blush, it doesn’t take too much digging to see that women are uniquely vulnerable to and disproportionately the victims of gun violence,” Davis wrote.

She cited the harrowing statistics that show how seriously women are affected by gun violence (54 percent of mass shootings, for example, involve domestic violence), and wrote about how important it is that women to take their rage to the ballot box. 

“Virginia and New Jersey voters just kicked a whole string of NRA-ass-kissing elected officials out of office and replaced them with governors and legislative members who are committed to common-sense gun-safety measures,” she wrote about Tuesday’s elections. Those voters, she said, were “propelled by” women-led groups that work to end gun violence, like Moms Demand Action and Americans for Responsible Solutions, led by former Congresswoman and mass shooting survivor Gabby Giffords. 

“A wise lawmaker once said to me, ‘Change happens when mama bear gets mad,’” Davis wrote. 

“Well, in the face of repeated mass shootings around the country and the human carnage left in their wake, mama bear is fire-engine-red mad right now. And she’s not backing down.”

Head over to Cosmo to read the whole piece.   

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the name of the Texas city in which there was a recent mass shooting. It is Sutherland Springs, not Sunderland Springs.