We’ve all seen the images.  A YouTube video of some chick blasting away at full-auto, or a Facebook wall plastered with photos of muzzle close-ups and pithy captions like “I don’t need no security!” or “Step across this threshold if you dare!” or whatever.  Yeah.

Have you ever known somebody who sings or hums all the time, and it’s just annoying?  You know, that person who actually does have a smidgen of talent and whose voice you might not mind if only you weren’t bombarded with it 90 hours a day?  Well, that’s the machine gun YouTube chick.  Same deal.  Now, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, you don’t need to be “in the closet” about your gun pride.  By all means, be a vocal advocate.  But if your every single Facebook post features some version of you perforating a poor defenseless target, then people might start to wonder just who it is you’re trying so desperately to convince.

Men have been doing this for years (they’re always accused of over-compensating for … well, shortcomings).  But many women fall into these habits too.  Sometimes it’s because they want to fit in with the boys (having grown up with two big brothers, I understand that motivation).  Sometimes they think — or they think the guys think — that it’s sexy or hip or cool.  Maybe they want to be seen as some kind of estrogen-fueled badass making a feminist power statement, as if that would scare the predators away.  But suppose these women found themselves in defensive force situations where their only evidence of justification was their own uncorroborated word.  Which one is more likely to be prosecuted: the modest, reasoned, reluctant warrior?  Or the flamboyant, fanatical, wannabe G.I. Jane?