NRA program offers women a different kind of hobby

Marjory Fagan stood motionless, slowed her breathing, stared ahead intently and then moved her index finger almost imperceptibly. Bang! Wincing slightly from the .22-caliber rifle’s recoil and piercing boom, she steadied herself, leveled the rifle and pulled the trigger again.

For Fagan, who is in her 60s, carries a designer handbag and lives on Manhattan’s fashionable Upper West Side, spending a Saturday at the shooting range was something different. The free women’s instructional clinic she was attending at the West Side Rifle Range offered women, many of whom had never handled a gun before, an opportunity to learn how to shoot.

Across the country, more women are taking up hunting and target shooting thanks to the National Rifle Association’s Women on Target program, which offers instructional clinics on firearms, shooting and hunting. According to the 2004 National Sporting Goods Association survey, 4.3 million women in the United States participate in target shooting and 2 million in hunting. The NRA sees the Women on Target program as a way to add to those numbers.

The NRA started the program to meet a demand, said John Robbins, an NRA spokesman. “Women wanted a women-friendly environment and shooting instruction,” Robbins said. “Women found it nice to find other women who were interested in shooting.”

The NRA says it has no figures on how many of the women who have taken part in the program have subsequently bought firearms.

Gun control advocates dismiss the notion that interest in guns is on the rise.

“Every few years the gun lobby and the gun industry roll out an initiative and they start saying that more women are buying guns, but there are never any numbers to really back up the claim that there’s a trend here,” said Peter Hamm, communications director for the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence. “It’s a retailing strategy disguised as a trend.”

Women on Target is offering eight hunts in 2006 and early 2007, four of which are already sold out. This year the NRA will probably offer more than 200 shooting clinics, like the one Fagan participated in last year in Manhattan. According to Robbins, 500 women attended clinics in 2000, the program’s first year, and in 2005, the number climbed to 5,600. Over all, about 23,000 women have participated in the program.

Women take up shooting for a variety of reasons. Some are looking for a new sport, some grew up with fathers who hunted but never invited them to join and some are seeking a means of protection.

“Women want to be able to defend themselves,” said Jackie Emslie, a certified firearms instructor. “Sometimes they explore firearms as a method of personal protection and they might go to a seminar and decide that it’s not for them. Which is OK because it means they’re making an informed decision.”

Emslie, 40, who lives in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., has been a firearms instructor for almost 10 years. She began learning about firearms when she and her husband first moved in together. Because he owned guns, he suggested that she take a firearms training course to learn how to safely handle guns. “It was four women, it was conducted by women instructors,” Emslie said. “I got the chance to shoot a gun for the first time in my life, and I just loved it.”

Gun education is a positive thing, Hamm said. “As far as training programs, we’re all for it," he said. "We think people who are going to purchase a gun should be trained to use one.”

He added that while the Constitution protects the right to own firearms, gun owners must also realize the immense responsibility. “If you have no gun in your life you have a far smaller risk of being a victim of gun violence than if you do have a gun,” he said.

The Second Amendment Sisters, a five-year-old organization dedicated to preserving the right to bear arms, said 17 million women in the United States owned guns. According to a national survey listed in a 1997 U.S. Department of Justice report on the use and ownership of firearms, there were 44 million gun owners in the United States. Forty-two percent of all men in the United States own guns, compared with 9 percent of women. About 35 percent of American households have guns.

Amy Heath is a firearms instructor and president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association’s Women’s Shooting Sports League, which meets monthly at the West Side Pistol Range in Manhattan. “It’s in my blood,” she said. “My brother and father were big hunters. I started shooting when I was young.”

Heath’s grandfather, Jeff Cooper, created the modern pistol technique taught at the American Pistol Institute. And Heath, 35, has also become an instructor.

At a Manhattan gun range recently, Margit Sawdey carefully examined her target so she could improve her aim on each round of practice with her .22-caliber rifle.

"I wouldn't have come here if it weren't for the women's shooting sports league," said Sawdey, 50, a public health administrator who started shooting witht the league about two and a half years ago.

“I was looking for a hobby, and flower arranging didn’t work,” she said over popping gunfire.

Sawdey, who lives in the Bronx and has three young sons at home, does not own her own firearm and is not a member of the NRA, whose politics she said she did not agree with. She was shooting next to an NRA member who believes protecting the Second Amendment is crucial. The women who gather here to shoot do not often dwell on their ideological and political differences. They just practice their aim, seek advice from experienced instructors and enjoy shooting in the company of women.

Heath hopes that Women on Target offers a positive view of firearms. “It’s a very fun, therapeutic, safe, rewarding sport,” she said. “I always try to get that across to women.”

Email: jc2310@columbia.edu