Colorado State Rep. Joe Salazar, for example, told young women who were concerned for their safety on America’s college campuses that they should stick to safe zones or blow whistles if they felt threatened. In this way, they could avoid the risk of inadvertently shoot someone threatening them:

It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at. And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop around at somebody.

In offering this advice – which assumed that women could limit their activity to safe zones or areas within ear shot of whistles – Salazar showed less imagination than the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Department of Safety. Even proponents of extreme gun control were taken aback by the University’s recommendation that women who feel threatened vomit or urinate on demand, or run away (“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”):

Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself.
Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead! It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.
Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.
Don’t take time to look back; just get away.
If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense.
Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.
Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone. (Emphasis added.)
Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!
Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.

Remember, every emergency situation is different. Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.

Indeed, the University came in for so much ridicule because of its “vomit” or “urinate” advice that it removed the above list from its website, leaving instead a message saying that the list had been misunderstood:
The recent circulation of this web page containing information about rape prevention at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs was taken out of context on popular social media sites.

No policy was changed by the university and no advisories were sent to students.
This page is not related to the gun control discussions now taking place in the Colorado General Assembly.
This page was created in 2006 as supplemental material for women who had completed an internationally recognized Rape Aggression Defense course offered free of charge to UCCS students.
The 10 tips were considered last resort options when all other defense methods have been exhausted.
This site was intended as a reminder for graduates of the RAD program, an intensive self defense program, and part of a larger discussion of last-resort tactics.

As a response to recent interest in the page, the Department of Public Safety has updated this page to provide additional context and information about crime prevention and the opportunity to enroll in the RAD class.

Accepting as true everything the University said to explain removing that infamous list, the fact remains that if ordinary, law-abiding citizens are disarmed, and if those citizens are not well-trained in martial arts, those ten recommendations are the only thing left in their self-defense arsenals. (And men are going to get laughed at if they try to say they’re menstruating.)

Incidentally, not everyone who attended the Trayvon Martin Memorial/self-defense protest supported total gun control. A few Second Amendment supporters showed up. One man, who was carrying a sign saying “Gun control disarms victims, not criminal[s],” told CBS news:

I think that people should have the right to defend themselves. It’s our Second Amendment right, and any sort of legislation on guns or any sort of gun control, all it’s doing is hurting the victims.

• Related: Conservative State Rep wrote back to Letter Opposing Concealed Carry “By all means, leave.”
• Related: Sarah Palin: ‘Feds Are Stockpiling Ammunition For Civil Unrest’
• Related: Letter from Columbine Shooting Survivor to President Obama Against Gun Control