Targeting a new audience
Increasingly, single women — and moms, wives, even grandmothers — own guns
BY MONICA RHOR

Ruth Ann Smith, who stands all of five feet tall in thick-soled platform sandals, grips her Colt Cobra .38 with both hands and aims the revolver at the male silhouette looming before her.

Her outstretched arms barely waver as she cocks the trigger with one thumb and sends a volley of shots crackling through the air. Blam. Blam-Blam. Blam. Blam-Blam.

If the target had been a real person, he’d probably be crumpled on the ground, shot several times in the heart and head. But this ”attacker” is merely an outline on a sheet of paper, now riddled with holes where Smith’s bullets met their mark. Smith turns around, a gleeful smile lighting her face. “Better, huh?”

Surprised that a 53-year-old grandmother, career nurse and suburban homemaker like Smith would spend her off hours target shooting at the local gun range?

At least 17 million women in the United States own firearms, and about 44 percent of adult women either own or have access to firearms, according to Gunowners of America, a guns rights lobbying and advocacy group founded in 1975 that has a current membership of about 350,000.

The numbers, which first leaped in the mid-1980s — a Gallup poll showed that the number of women gun owners jumped 53 percent between 1983 and 1986 — are steadily growing.

Highly publicized incidents of violence often produce a sudden spike in sales and interest among potential gun owners — both male and female — who worry about their safety. Last October, the month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, 44,728 people requested applications for concealed weapons permits in Florida alone, about three times the average number of requests. Law enforcement officials say gun ownership in general has increased in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Following the abduction and murder of high school student Ana Maria Angel on Miami Beach in late April, local gun ranges and dealers saw a surge of women customers and couples.

”It brings it close to home, especially in an incident like that, when you see what can even happen to someone with a male partner,” said Walter Philbrick, a former Hialeah police officer who now owns IPS Gun Range in Hollywood.

However, most experts and gun advocates trace the rise in gun ownership among women to a much more pervasive change in society:

”If it was ever true that June Cleaver was running around in heels, waiting for Ward to come home and kill the burglar, it’s not true anymore. There are more single women; the overwhelming number of single-parent households are headed by women,” said Peggy Tartarro, executive editor of Women & Guns magazine, which claims to be the only magazine specifically for women gun owners. The publication, with a circulation of about 18,000, carries product reviews, training tips and profiles of ”real women” who are gun owners.

”Over the last 20 to 25 years, women have become more responsible for their own personal decisions, their personal home security. They are making decisions that used to be considered in the male purview,” Tartarro said.

The FBI and most local law enforcement agencies do not keep statistics on firearm ownership by gender, but there are other indicators of more women buying and learning to use guns.

The Fairfax, Va.-based National Rifle Association, which does not track membership by gender, says attendance at ”Women on Target,” an NRA program providing instructional clinics in sports shooting, has increased 300 percent since 2000 — a clear indication, said spokesman Andrew Arulandan, of the rising number of women gun owners.

The ”Women on Target” program is one part of an increased focus on women gun owners by the NRA. The organization also has started a program called ”Refuse to be a Target,” which offers personal safety tips and teaches self-defense techniques through three-hour confidential seminars.

The NRA also has started running ads featuring women such as actress Susan Howard in an effort to increase membership among women in the NRA. Its website also includes a section aimed at women.

More than 10,000 women now belong to Second Amendment Sisters, an Internet-based pro-gun organization for women founded in 1999, when the group organized a rally as a counterpoint to the Million Mom March in Washington. More than 5,000 people turned out for the event.

DEVELOPED FOR WOMEN

In addition, many firearms manufacturers now make guns and gun accessories specifically for women. They range from the LadySmith line of handguns marketed by Smith & Wesson — guns made for smaller grips and featuring a range of designs meant to appeal to women — to stylish purses with special compartments for gun storage.

In the movies, gun-toting women are often portrayed as super-charged outlaws or vigilantes: In the 1980s, that meant Linda Hamilton in The Terminator. Today, it’s Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.

In real life, says Kim Watson, a Tallahassee-area resident who helped found Second Amendment Sisters (www.sas-aim.org), “We’re normal people, professional people, your next door neighbors, sisters, mothers, daughters.”

Female gun owners include those who are drawn to firearms because of an interest in sports-shooting or hunting, as well as women like Smith, a Davie resident, who first picked up a gun seven years ago so she could go target-shooting with her husband and now considers it an invaluable form of personal protection.

”The way things are going in the world, you can’t be safe anywhere. You can’t be safe walking around,” said Smith, who often travels on business and plans to get a concealed weapons permit so she can carry a smaller .22-caliber gun on her trips.

”I’m only 4-foot-11. I need to carry a big stick,” said Smith, who spends about two hours every Wednesday and Saturday at the gun range.

Becky Wilson, 32, a Davie resident who works as a comptroller, is new to firearms. But, like many first-time gun buyers, Wilson had been mulling over the decision to purchase a weapon for some time.

As a single woman, Wilson said she was looking for a way to feel safer. Her brother, a police officer in Colorado, finally convinced her that learning to use a gun would offer that reassurance.

Wilson, who attended a concealed weapons course at American Range and Gun Shop in Pembroke Park, said her safety concerns have magnified in recent months, though she can’t pinpoint the reason.

”I lived in Miami for eight years and never had a problem with break-ins,” she said. “Now, I’m living in a safer neighborhood, but I feel more nervous.”

In many ways, says Tartarro, Wilson and Smith are typical of the women now learning to use guns.

A survey conducted three years ago by Women & Guns magazine showed that many of its readers want guns as a form of personal protection. Most had owned guns for more than 10 years. Many were single or headed single-parent households.

And, especially in the wake of Sept. 11, said Tartarro, many women are determined to take control of their own safety, just as the women’s movement led many to take control of careers and finances.

`A SENSE OF DANGER’

”There’s a sense of danger now, an awareness that there may come a point where I am responsible for myself and other human beings,” said Tartarro. “So, a lot of women are saying: Now is the time to go out to the range and learn how a gun functions.”

Second Amendment Sisters also emphasizes the role of firearms in self-defense. Its website lists statistics such as one taken from a 1995 research study by criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz that notes: ”As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual assault.” As part of its mission, says Watson, the group is trying to broaden the image of female gunowners and recast gun ownership as a form of feminist empowerment.

”At one time, we were looked at as a novelty by the mainstream press, but we’ve been able to put another face on firearms ownership,” said Watson, 39, who is married, has a 12-year-old son and works as director of communications for a desktop publishing company.

Watson, who at one point often debated with her husband, a longtime gun enthusiast, about gun control, says her views began to change as she watched news coverage of the 1999 Million Mom March and realized that she was only hearing one viewpoint: an anti-gun stance.

”It disturbed me,” said Watson.

She mentioned her dismay on an on-line news thread — and was deluged with responses from women who were pro-gun. That was the start of Second Amendment Sisters, and the beginning of Watson’s training in how to use a gun.

Watson now owns a .38-revolver, which she keeps in the glove compartment of her car — a safety precaution, she says, for her 100-mile round-trip commute to work through rural country roads.

”I’m not a gun nut. This didn’t turn me into someone who does this for fun,” said Watson, who lives in an isolated area 30 miles from the nearest sheriff’s office.

“But I know that if I broke down on the side of the road, that I could protect myself. It’s much more empowering than having to say I won’t touch a gun because I’m afraid.”