Post-Election Fears

Each time Barack Obama was elected president, gun and ammo sales went through the roof. Gun nuts were afraid that the government was going to come and get their guns. Obama never advocated taking guns away, he only proposed rigorous background checks and making it harder to obtain military grade weapons.

Of course, there were no confiscations. It was all a huge lie, baseless fears stoked by paranoid conspiracy theorists, who incidentally owned stock in weapons manufacturers, whose stock prices went up. But when Trump was elected gun stocks dropped:

While industries like construction, biotech and private prisons saw their stocks rise on Wednesday, companies like Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger & Co. fell sharply, dropping by 15% and 16%, respectively.

Trump's election has stoked different fears, causing people to rush out and buy a different product: long-term birth control. IUDs can prevent pregnancy for up to 12 years, while hormonal implants work for three to six years -- hopefully long enough to survive the Trump administration.

Unlike the irrational paranoid fear gun nuts felt, the fear these women feel is totally justified.

Whereas Obama never proposed gun confiscation, Trump has promised to eliminate the birth control mandate for insurance policies. He has promised to repeal Obamacare, which will eliminate health care for millions of Americans, including women of child-bearing age who can't afford to be pregnant without health care.

Trump has promised to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides birth control, prenatal care, abortions and women's health care.

Trump has promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to ban abortion. This allowed many Catholics and evangelicals held their noses and vote for the thrice-divorced pussy-grabber.

Trump has said that women should be punished for having an abortion. He unconvincingly walked that back after this aides told him he wasn't supposed to actually say out loud the truly disgusting things that conservatives believe.

Trump has promised to deny women access to birth control, health care, and abortion. So of course they fear that they will get pregnant during next two or four years that Republicans hold the presidency and Congress.

Does Trump's presidency mean it's open season on women?

But darker fears may also be at work. Trump's candidacy has exposed a lot of sexism and outright misogyny, which Trump voters tacitly or explicitly condoned. When Trump was caught bragging about sexually assaulting women, his supporters defended him. They said that Trump was just lying to impress Billy Bush, or they denied such assaults are criminal, or said they wanted to grab pussies themselves.

Are women afraid that a Trump presidency will start an all-out assault on women by dickheads who want to emulate the president-elect?

That's probably a paranoid and irrational fear. But unlike the unreasonable fear of government gun confiscation that never happened during the Obama administration, the fact is that thousands of women are sexually assaulted and raped every single year.

And there's a disturbing trend in the court system to let rich white rapists off with a slap on the wrist (here are more).

So, all you gun nuts out there: your confiscation fears were all paranoid fantasies. But women's fears of getting assaulted, raped and pregnant in a country run by a sexual predator are all too real and ever-present.