February 20, 2013 01:06 PM UTC

Hey, Colorado Republicans: Rape Is Not a Joke (Trigger Warning)

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• by: Colorado Pols

THURSDAY UPDATE: The Denver Post editorial board weighs in on the ridiculous attempts to link Salazar's comments to disgraced Missouri Rep. Todd Akin:

But to suggest, as some have, that his blunder approaches Todd Akin territory is a desperate reach fueled by Republicans tired of having to absorb gaffes by members of their own party…

…Call Salazar's comments patronizing. Say that they fit in with the school of thought that armed citizens, women in this case, can't be trusted to use a gun properly. But to equate his comments with Akin's extremist views on rape and abortion is a leap in logic that ignores the facts in an effort to manufacture a "gotcha" moment.

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UPDATE: Think Progress:

After Colorado Rep. Joe Salazar (D) suggested that women are too paranoid to responsibly carry a gun — a failed attempt to make the point that allowing college students to carry concealed weapons on campus won’t actually help prevent sexual assaults — the Larimer County Republican Women set out to prove that women need more than just whistles to protect them from rape. But they chose to do so by mocking sexual violence itself, compiling a fake “rape defense kit” with a whistle and a pen and labeling it “In Case of Rape, Robbery, or Assault OPEN IMMEDIATELY.”

…[M]aking light of the sexual violence that remains incredibly prevalent on college campuses — an estimated one in four women will be sexually assaulted while they are in college, and university officials have been notorious participants in perpetuating rape culture — is an offensive counter to the Democratic lawmaker’s original comments.

Counterclockwise from top: Rep. Justin Everett (R), Rep. Perry Buck (R), House Minority Leader Mark Waller (R), Sen. Ted Harvey (R), Rep. Brian DelGrosso (R).

Here are some photos making the rounds today on Twitter and Facebook, of a number of Republican Colorado legislators, including Minority Leader Mark Waller, posing with something called a "Rape Defense Kit" distributed by the Larimer County Republican Women. The "kit" is labeled "In Case of Rape, Robbery, or Assault OPEN IMMEDIATELY" and contains, as you can see above, a whistle and a ballpoint pen.

When we wrote earlier today about Republicans revealing a side of themselves more offensive to most women than anything said by Democrats in the recent hot-button debate over gun safety legislation in Colorado, we could not have predicted that so many Republican legislators would provide such an excellent, if very disturbing, example of what we meant. We return to advice we have given before about stepping on the third rail of insensitivity regarding the crime of rape–it seems to us the only thing that could be worse would be to make jokes about it.

As these Republican Colorado lawmakers just did.