Pinkwashing Turns on Itself with Breast Cancer Awareness Gun

by Anne Landman — November 3, 2009 - 2:54pm
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Smith & Wesson Breast Cancer Awareness PistolOctober was Breast Cancer Awareness month, and the group Breast Cancer Action seized on the opportunity to promote its Think Before you Pink campaign to raise awareness of how companies are increasingly exploiting breast cancer as a marketing device to sell products -- some of which are actually harmful to women's health. Pink ribbon campaigns are offering up some bizarre, albeit benign products like a breast cancer awareness toaster and a breast cancer awareness floating Beer Pong table. But the most bizarre item yet to have a pink ribbon slapped on it must be Smith & Wesson's Pink Breast Cancer Awareness 9 mm Pistol, promoted by a woman named Julie Goloski, Smith and Wesson's Consumer Program Manager and a sharpshooter herself. Goloski is promoting S&W's breast cancer awareness pistol on her Facebook page, saying "October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Breast Cancer Awareness M&P’s are shipping to dealers. I am thrilled to have my name associated with such a worthy cause and one of my favorite firearms." According to a 2008 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, firearms are the second most common cause of violent deaths of women, accounting for 29.2% of all violent deaths among females in the U.S. in 2008.

Main Source: 
GunBroker.com, November 3, 2009

Comments

Statistics

Submitted by Neutral (not verified) on April 23, 2012 - 7:21am.

The thrust of the article is that a symbol of breast cancer awareness on a firearm is inappropriate because firearms are a common cause of violent deaths of women. A lot of the comments suggest that there are significant numbers of women who defend themselves from violent crime with handguns. It seems to me that pro-gun people should know the numbers, not be asking for them. I'm not against guns. I'm just interested in learning the number of women who successfully defend themselves from violent crime by wielding a gun. Who keeps such statistics? It would be enlightening to know which is higher, the number of women who die by firearms or the number of women who live by firearms? It would also be interesting to know, since so many violent crimes against women are committed by people they know, how gun action by women is treated by law enforcement and the courts.

Right On

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on March 17, 2012 - 9:52pm.

This is pinkwashing at its creepiest. Disgusting! Thanks Anne for highlighting this.

We miss CMD covering stuff like this...

Submitted by Fratboy (not verified) on February 11, 2012 - 10:15pm.

We're tired of the Wisconsin stuff.

Thank you for highlighting this

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on February 11, 2012 - 10:13pm.

Now that we've seen what Susan G. Komen Foundation is really up to (read: political effort to attack Planned Parenthood), maybe we'll finally see some waning of all this pink-product nonsense.

Just slightly off-topic...

Submitted by Mutternich on February 12, 2012 - 11:02am.

...No mention of guns, but...

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166111/evil-brilliance-komens-karen-handel

Bottom line: sweets to the sweet.

The author of this article is right on

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on February 11, 2012 - 10:11pm.

A pink "breast cancer awareness" gun is just insane and completely inappropriate.

So now the go to source for

Submitted by Timothy (not verified) on February 12, 2011 - 8:24am.

So now the go to source for firearms statistics is the CDC? Yeah, guns are diseases. Sure. If you want me to believe your statistics why not find a real source?

Yes, CDC tracks fatal firearm injuries in the U.S.

Submitted by Anne Landman on October 25, 2011 - 12:44pm.

CDC considers the steep rise in firearm injuries over the decades to be a public health problem. The agency tracks the the trend epidemiologically, with an eye towards developing prevention strategies. Here is CDC's report on firearm deaths in the U.S. available online: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/firarmsu.htm

cherry picking the data

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on May 16, 2012 - 9:58am.

The CDC summary says that firearms deaths have increased a lot in 33 years. But they do not take note of the fact that a similar increase has taken place in Great Britain, even though "over there" gun laws have become so increasingly strict there is today a total ban on private firearms. Yet firearms deaths are twice as high (per capita) than they were in the '60s. Obviously, gun control isn't really a factor. We need to move past spurious gun debates and try to find out WHY violence is on the rise in Western civilization. But guns aren't the source of the problem.

(search the Home Office for source data)

real *awareness*

Submitted by chemiconscious (not verified) on October 18, 2010 - 12:56pm.

Ok, how about *fighting* breast cancer with actual *awareness*. I understand that the issue of breast cancer strikes a chord with many of us. We all have mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and since this is a growing epidemic, many of us have experienced its effects up close. I think this debate has gone off topic. The issue at hand here is not gun safety. It's not about statistics of the ways in which women die. It is about the *breast cancer awareness* campaign itself.

We're all so caught up in the hype of finding a cure, that we're forgetting to resort to the most important tool in this fight - knowledge. It's not about money. It's not about seeing pink and thinking about your Aunt Mildred who died the year before last from breast cancer. It's about educating ourselves and our children about the hazardous chemicals in everyday products that may one day become cancer.

The fact that *awareness* still means pouring money into a cure is just a way of passing off responsibility, instead of taking control and actually being aware of where this cancer, and others, are coming from. The fact that there's a pink handle on a gun is just as ironic as cosmetic companies jumping on the pink bandwagon even though their products contain known carcinogens. It's marketing. It's about money. And it promotes the wrong kind of awareness. It's a distraction: a way for citizens to turn a blind eye from the real problem because they feel they've done their part in contributing to the eradication of this disease.

It needs to be about intention; about staying true to one's own values; about taking responsibility for one's own awareness; about learning the facts, the causes. The best way to avoid dying from cancer, is to never have it in the first place. There are over 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the US, of which less than 7% have been tested for effects on human health. That's scary. We are obviously not being protected, so we need to save ourselves. Let's wake up before it's too late.