They add that the big surge in women's gun ownership has occurred since 2018 and, almost without exception, is seen across the board without regard to race, age, income, party identification, or education.... "Ownership is demographically diverse: 45.7% of validated gun owners are female, 25.6% do not identify as White (alone), and the gap in ownership rates between White Americans (34.6%) and Black Americans (33.0%) has narrowed to less than two percentage points," Georgetown University's William English wrote last month, of numbers from the National Firearms Survey....Smart and Morral add that women with children have been especially quick to acquire guns. The shift "has been driven almost entirely by single (not cohabitating) mothers, a group that may have been particularly affected by changing attitudes toward personal empowerment and safety concerns during a period of rising violence." Women mostly own handguns, which are closely identified with self-defense.
I've taught several women to shoot myself.
A number of women I know started carrying firearms after a local sheriff encouraged it. A known violent rapist had escaped while being transported to prison, and the sheriff was blunt about rural response times, even along several major roads. This was in the mid-1990s. Too, feral dogs have become more of a problem in the area since the 1990s.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
They always had a reason, but they never needed one. Self defense is a right that is necessary to human dignity. If they’d told me nothing about why they wanted a gun, I’d have still taught them.
DeleteIf they’d told me nothing about why they wanted a gun, I’d have still taught them.
DeleteI'd have asked them why they wanted to learn to shoot (which is not the same as why they want a gun). There's a big difference between shooting in defense and shooting to punch holes in the X on a sheet of paper or to ring the steel target.
If the former, it's necessary that they be seriously introspective about their willingness to shoot another human being. The slightest hesitation in a defensive situation may be all the attacker needs to take the gun away and use it on the woman. Especially if the attacker is numbed up on narcotics or amped up on stimulants.
Eric Hines