Last month, Liberty Counsel President Anita Staver said that she plans on “taking a Glock .45 to the ladies room” after Target announced a new policy prohibiting discrimination against transgender customers.
Liberty Counsel is a notorious anti-LGBT group that has taken credit for shaping discriminatory laws such as North Carolina’s discriminatory HB2.
In an interview with Alan Colmes that was posted online today, she repeated her claim that women should take their firearms while out shopping in order to “prepare for predators that might be in the restroom.”
When Colmes asked if she could name any cases of crimes that have occurred as a result of states states adopting LGBT nondiscrimination laws, Staver was unable to name any.
“I’m not a statistician,” she said.
However, she did claim that there have been around 20 crimes committed in Target restrooms, although she didn’t say whether any of those alleged crimes had anything to do with the store policy, and said that she was personally a victim of attempted assault.
Colmes responded: “I’m very sorry that happened to you, but the question is whether or not these laws have led to increased incidents of assault. And in state after state, whether it’s Connecticut, Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, Iowa, they’ve all said, statements from those states, no additional incidents since laws in those states have gone into effect. So it seems like it’s a solution in search of a problem.”
Staver nonetheless said that Target has “caused predators to know that women are easy prey in these places” and “put a bullseye on the women by highly publicizing this policy and that’s caused predators to go around in these different states in the country and target women.”
She then falsely claimed that a man in Washington state exposed himself to a girls’ swim team and conceded that “there may not have been increases in the past, but I guarantee you there will be with the national attention that we have.”
