Percentage of women who are shooters

[Solitar]

An acquaintance stated that half of women are in favor of gun ownership and/or are active gun owners or shooters. My experience leads me to believe that even ten percent would be very optimistic. Are there some surveys or statistics on the general population to answer this?

Please don't view this as women-bashing, but rather as we have our work cut out for us if nearly all women are NOT gun owners or are anti-gun because they are "frightened" of guns. Nevermind that hubby or dad owned guns and shot or hunted. The wife or daughter may have had as little to do with guns as possible. Yes, this may have been partially the fault of dad who didn't teach their daughters, but if mom was against such teaching there would be domestic strife if dad had pushed the issue. Thus this may be self-perpetuating.

In any case, I've reviewed a roster of our gun club. Out of 162 members, six (6) are women. How that relates to percentages in the general population - I do not know. Maybe one in twenty would be accurate for a semi-rural small town like here. In liberal cities it could be less than one percent and in really rural areas it could be one in five. But it seems that gun owning/shooting women are a very slim minority.

[This message has been edited by Solitar (edited October 19, 2000).]

 

[JJR]

I would kinda' hope that one of the points of the 2nd Amendment is that there should not be any statistics pertaining to that. Out of curiosity though, I would like to see some too.

That being said, also keep in mind that most states are "community property" states. Any married household with a gun in it has a female gun owner living there whether she likes it or not. Ask my wife if she is a gun owner and she will say yes... even though she hasn't paid for any of them! Not one! EVER!!!

I meet very few female hunters. At my trap/skeet range I would say that they are about 30%. The recreational / self defense target shooters I see are easily about half female (some days even more).

 

[Dagny]

If you guys de-emphasized the offensive killing and instead emphasized the defensive role and the sheer fun of precision shooting AND you could rein in the macho blustering and show off, maybe you could recruit more women.

But there is also the thorough brainwashing of women that guns kill - as if the little pieces of iron are animated like Christmas Eve toy soldiers. But much blame lies with the media which ignores successful defenses with guns and with an education establishment/environment which includes teachers colleges and liberal profs to young female teachers intimidated by strutting young cocks who are allowed to get away with anything nowadays.

Many women are frightened of guns and gun packing males. This can work either way. But right now it is working to the MMM's advantage.

I know the following is seems to be an overused excuse. But we need more role models, FEMALE role models to teach us how to use guns for sport and defense. Meanwhile, guys need to take girlfriends, wives, daughters, friends and business associates under their wing and teach them. Unfortunately, receptive women are far and few between - except in rural areas where they've been raised with guns.

For a moving movie which gets the self-defense message across when a pioneer woman repeatedly screams "stop" to an advancing rapist and then pulls a handgun concealed in the folds of her dress and shoots him dead, see the 1987 "The Quick and The Dead" starring Sam Elliot and Kate Capshaw (note that this is NOT the 1995 movie of the same title by Sam Raimi and starring Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, and Leonardo DiCaprio)
http://www.hollywood.com/maltin/q/quickandthedeadthe-1987.htm

[This message has been edited by Dagny (edited October 21, 2000).]

 

[DC]

I'd agree that 50% "active" is extremely inaccurate. I'm a country girl and even here on my home turf finding 20% active female shooters of this pro-biased population would be difficult, thus I am still a minority. Note, however, I state active shooters.....political demographics in this area have more women pro-gun (politically) than in urban regions and/or nationtional average...thus 50% is not at all unreasonable

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