Josh Marshall writes about the hate swarm attacking Zerlina Maxwell for having suggested, on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, that women shouldn’t be expected to arm themselves to protect themselves from rapists. As Zerlina said, telling women to get a gun is not rape prevention.

Another point Zerlina’s made on Hannity’s show is that it may not be so easy to shoot someone if you know them. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in data for 2005-2010, the rapist was a stranger to the victim in only 22 percent of cases. In 34 percent of cases the rapist was an intimate partner, a current or former husband or boyfriend; in 38 percent of cases the rapist was a well-known casual acquaintance. And in 6 percent of cases the rapist was a family member.

BTW, in the same time period, 55 percent of rapes occurred in or near the victims’ homes; 57 percent of the perpetrators were white men.

Hannity kept saying that teaching men to not rape would not stop “criminals,” but like many men Hannity misses what rape really is. Most of the time, the “perp” is not just some faceless, generic “criminal,” but a man the victim knows, and possibly trusted, and may be in a relationship with, and who may have no criminal record and wouldn’t dream of committing any other time of crime. Indeed, from what I know of the psychology of rape, especially in the case of intimate partner/acquaintance rape, the perp may not perceive his act as “criminal.”

As far as using guns to prevent rape, other stats show it doesn’t work. Again, through the miracle of Google, we can easily find which cities in the U.S. have the highest and lowest rates of rape. New York City has among the lowest rates; Anchorage, Alaska among the highest. But there’s no real pattern I can see, except that the U.S. does have an unusually high rate of forcible rape to go along with our unusually high rate of homicides and our unusually high rate of firearm possession.