This article has been syndicated two or three times since it appeared in
March.
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Women wielding barrel of protection

http://www.bgdailynews.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200403/14+guns20040314_top-feature.html+20040314

Ponytails and manicured nails are becoming a more common sight at
shooting ranges, indicating a turning tide for the gun industry. The
historically male-dominated shooting sport is becoming less foreign to
females as more women flock to gun classes and target practice.
“We have had somewhere around 6,000 students
since October 1996, and I would say around one-third to nearly half of
our students are female,” said Deborah Williams of Bowling Green, who
has helped teach concealed-weapons classes for the past eight years. “I
get a mixture of single women who live alone, women who have felt it is
necessary because they’ve become victims of a crime, or I have
occasionally had women who are being stalked.
“Some women come with husbands or boyfriends and
they take the class together. A lot of females get into this and learn
that it is a really fun sport.”
The expanding market has not gone unnoticed by
corporations. In 1990, the Smith and Wesson gun company introduced the
LadySmith ? a slim, easily concealed revolver with a shortened trigger
reach. Now, the LadySmith can be further feminized with rosewood grips,
gold detailing and an engraved image of a rose.
Purse manufacturers have also identified a
marketing niche ? bags equipped with a special compartment for guns.
Some women, frustrated and pained by waistline gun holsters often worn
comfortably by men, have taken a liking to the more skirt-friendly thigh
holsters.
Mike Clay, owner of The Firing Line indoor range
and gun shop on Shive Lane, said he has seen gun-shopping females from
all walks of life. He has also seen many women improve their aim on the
range after only a little practice.
“Women are good shots,” he said. “Women usually
outshoot men. I can’t explain why.”
Williams ventured a guess: Women are usually
easier to teach, she said, because men may have picked up bad
techniques, such as shooting the wrong way.
“Women tend to be more focused, and tend to
learn what we teach them and do it right,” she said. “I would much
prefer to have a student, whether male or female, who hasn’t been
shooting a lot, because they haven’t picked up those bad habits and they
don’t have preconceived notions.”
Williams said another thing most women have in
their favor is a fierce maternal instinct. Protection, whether of self
or family, plays a large role in why women take up the shooting sport.
“There is nothing meaner on this Earth than a
woman when her family is threatened,” Williams said.
Beverly Steele, a 57-year-old Bowling Green
woman who recently participated in Williams’ eight-hour concealed-carry
class at The Firing Line, said she would like her 36-year-old daughter
take the class next. Her daughter, single mother to an 8-year-old boy,
lives in a rural area.
“She lives out in the country alone and her
little Pomeranian isn’t much protection,” Steele said. “I have known a
lot of ladies who are interested in taking this class, and my daughter
is going to be next. I think a lot of women are realizing that this type
of training is important for self-preservation.”
Steele said her job ? teaching graduated
driver’s licensing to high school students ? frequently requires
driving alone at night. She and her mother, who is now 79, have also
driven cross-country seven times, spending about 40 percent of their
time on secondary roads. Steele said having a gun and concealed-carry
permit would bring confidence and reassurance in her many travels.
???
May 12, 1997, was a routine Monday evening for
Ann Barry ? until an incident at about 11 p.m. that garnered national
media attention.
The Western Kentucky University history
professor awoke to a loud chopping sound as two men pick-axed their way
through the side door of her ranch-style home. Acting on skills gathered
from years of training that began as a young girl hunting with her
grandfather, Barry grabbed her Ruger SP101 revolver from the nightstand
beside her bed. She crouched in the darkness at the end of the long
hallway, and saw a man at the opposite end of the hall turn toward a
guest bedroom and flick on the light.
“He had a gun,” she said. “It was then or never.
For me, it was live or go six feet under.
“He started to turn toward me and I just shot
him. I shot him in the side as he was turning. Otherwise, we would have
been facing each other and would have probably killed each other.”
The man still managed to shoot five bullets into
the darkness, but Barry was unharmed. Only then did she have the
opportunity to call law enforcement. She said a woman’s first resort in
such scenarios should be to call 911 and flee out a window or back door,
but she had no such options.
“What happened that night took about two minutes
altogether, but it seemed like an eternity,” she said.
The man Barry shot, 28-year-old James Shugart,
was arrested in a nearby field, where he had collapsed. He was sentenced
to 25 years in a federal penitentiary on charges of attempted murder and
first-degree burglary.
His partner that night, 18-year-old Gordon Wayne
Childress, was arrested upon further investigation and sentenced to 20
years in a federal penitentiary on charges of attempted murder by
complicity and first-degree burglary by complicity.
The two men were part of a ring of thieves who
had burglarized several homes at random throughout the Barren River
district.
“People were getting scared and wondering who
they were going to hit next, but they picked the wrong house that
night,” Barry said, reiterating the importance of proper firearm
training and practice to ensure a cool head in dangerous situations.
“I have been exposed to guns and that type of
thing all my life, but when this sort of thing happens unexpectedly, you
are really thrown into sheer panic,” she said. “I just acted on impulse,
but fortunately I had training. Proper training is very important. You
can’t just have a gun. You have to practice with it, care for it, and
learn how to use it.”
???
Williams had a similar experience in 1977, when
a man tried to break into her apartment one afternoon while her husband,
Rick, was at work. In her case, law enforcement arrived in time to
arrest the man, but Williams was standing in her living room, armed and
ready with a shotgun.
“This guy had been questioned on 11 rapes and I
would have been his 12th,” Williams said. “The police got there in time,
but I had only a few minutes to decide, ‘Will I shoot this guy if he
comes through my door?’ Most women don’t think of those things, but
these are things you need to be prepared for.”
That is the reason for the concealed-carry
classes, Williams said. It teaches men and women to think through
life-threatening scenarios, as opposed to being trigger-happy.
“So many people misunderstood this when we first
started,” Williams said. “People thought we were going to be a bunch of
vigilantes out here.”
On the contrary, she said, the class teaches
proper shooting techniques, when not to shoot, safe ways to carry, clean
and store a gun, and the legalities of self-defense with a deadly
weapon. Upon passing written firing-range tests at the end of the
course, participants are eligible to apply for a concealed-carry permit
at their local sheriff’s office.
Donna Rehders of Bowling Green took the class
recently after deciding it was time to join her husband, Tom, a
concealed-carry licensee of nearly two years.
“I go lots of places alone and I’m worried,”
Rehders said. “You see all this stuff on television about women getting
abducted and they don’t have protection.”
Williams said the frequently presupposed notion
of female vulnerability can actually work in their favor.
“I think that women are very vulnerable, or more
so than men, on one hand,” she said. “On the other hand, I think we have
the element of surprise on our side. They don’t expect us to be armed.
They don’t expect us to be able to defend ourselves and do it the right
way.
“We are not going out hunting for crime. But if
it comes to you, you are doing what you have to do to protect yourself
and your family.”
? For more information about a class at The
Firing Line, call 842-1791.
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