Pinkwashing Turns on Itself with Breast Cancer Awareness Gun
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October 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.
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Comments
i wish my brother george was here.
i believe my guns may very well be defective. i own several pistols and revolvers and carry at least one of them fully loaded with no manual safeties on them every day, all day. i've done this for a few years now and thus-far no one has ever been injured. i sleep at night with one of these deadly implements on the table next to me at night and so far it hasn't done anything evil to anyone. i have a knife in the kitchen made by ginsu which cut my finger last year so i'm calling for a protest of ginsu and a full ban on all kitchen knives. according to your reasoning these guns of mine should have caused some sort of injury or harm by now so i'm pretty sure mine are broken.
Smith and Wesson has been
Smith and Wesson has been building pink-accented "Lady Smith" guns for years now. Why is it suddenly a bad thing that they're donating some money from the sale of those guns to cancer research?
It's all about promotion ...
... and in this case, about selling guns.
If S&W just wanted to benefit cancer victims, why not just make a donation to a cancer research organization without pinking the product?
Anne Landman
Why not just donate and not pink the product?
For the same reason Lance Armstrong came up with his silly yellow "Live Strong" bands...because it raises awareness, which is one of the laudable goals of the Susan G. Komen foundation as well as every organization fighting cancer. The same reason that people I see drive around with bumper stickers on their cars that read, "Save the ta-tas" and "I love my ta-tas." To raise awareness. Increased awareness leads to increased public interest, involvement and participation in the fight. How can you possibly object to that? Honestly, there are 80 million gun owners in America...or something like that...maybe more. Increased awareness among that demographic could be HUGE in the fight against breast cancer. Imagine if each of those gun owners contributed $10 dollars to the fight. The result would be almost a BILLION dollars to fund research, treatment, care, etc. How can that possibly be a bad thing? Your position is clearly from the "cut your nose off to spite your face" perspective. You sound like my pastor who constantly rails against the lottery...except he's smart enough to honestly admit that if I won the lottery he'd willingly accept my contribution of my tithe of 10% of my winnings, with which he could do a lot of good. All the issues of factual inaccuracy and illogic in your position aside, I recommend that you sit down and evaluate your views and consider what is really important.
..
What do you consider a Violent death?
Somebody has to stop these intelligent guns that shoot women on their own!
Good on Smith and Wesson on helping out!
This article is hogwash...
Smith & Wesson is a classic American company, and it's products are made in America, by Americans. How is this any different from Levis or another major American company from being involved in this campaign to help raise money for breast cancer research. Guns don't cause the problem, bad people doing illegal things cause the problem. If all of the guns in the U.S. were magically removed tomorrow, the same number of people would be killed by knives, clubs and any other weapon that a bad person choosing to do illegal things would use to replace the use of the firearm.
I also agree with ToddG about this being disrespectful to Julie Goloski. As one of the greatest practical shooters of all time, she could have just as easily put her name on the M&P and accepted the money from the use of her name. She deserves respect for what she has accomplished in the sport of practical shooting and for the use of her name in this project.
I challenge the
I challenge the appropriateness of "pinking" a product so closely associated with being used to purposefully wound and kill, and leveraging it supposedly to fight a disease that also wounds and kills.
It's bizarre.
In my opinion, Julie Goloski missed the mark on this one (so to speak).
Anne Landman
Good people do good things
Simplistically put, good people do good things with their recourses. Bad people do bad things. Good gun owners protect and serve themselves and others. Bad people cause harm to society. You have to separate those intending to cause harm, from those intending to protect (they may have to cause harm to, but not by choice). The product S&W provides are a benefit to society, a good thing, that criminals are allowed to misuse (through lax prosecution and suspended sentences) to do harm. Julie is a good person, who has chosen to do a good thing with her recourses. Good people do good things.
Anne, respectfully I think
Anne, respectfully I think you are the one missing the point. S&W isn't "cloaking" itself in anything. The M&P9 JG campaign isn't even mentioned on their home page. The company makes a product. You can like it or dislike it, that's certainly your right. But the company, and the person who pushed this project through (Julie Golob) chose to raise money for a cause that I'm guessing you and I both care about. Julie has also been involved in Locks of Love for years, and has helped raise money for similar charities in the past. Accusing them of acting out of corporate greed is unfair and hurtful.
As a cancer survivor myself, I'm happy to see ANY company join the fight and help put an end to the disease.
Sorry
Anne doesn't reply to comment like this one.