Did you know that today is National Take a Woman to the Shooting Range Day? You were probably unaware of this fact, because I just made it up.
In fact, I think every day is a great day to take a woman shooting. It’s a lot of fun for everyone involved, it builds what could be an important skill, and it demystifies firearms.
Women make great shooters. This is because they approach firearms without a hint of attitude. They don’t have anything to prove and they are great listeners. One of my favorite things is seeing a new female shooter that I have just helped learn to shoot proceed to outshoot guys who have been shooting for a long time guys that really aren’t very good, but think they are God’s gift to the shooting world. In fact, some new female shooters are so good at bullseye shooting that it’s almost scary.
I recently took a childhood friend shooting, and after less than an hour, she was keeping all of her shots (with a .22 caliber 1911) within the A zone on an IPSC target at 25 yards. In my opinion, that’s great shooting. Sure, I can do better, mainly because I’m God’s gift to the shooting world just kidding. It’s worth noting that some of the targets in this article were shot by me with a Kahr CW40, and she was able to shoot a 9 mm Glock 19 with greater precision in slow fire shooting than I was able to shoot the .40 S&W.
I highly recommend starting any new shooter off with dry firing, then .22s, then, if they are comfortable, centerfire weapons. Avoid anything with stout recoil – it’s not very enjoyable and it won’t instill good shooting habits. If they seem truly interested in shooting something small and powerful, it’s best to have them start with a weapon that has only one round inside, in case they have difficulty controlling it after firing the first shot.
If you have a chance to take someone (male or female) who has little or no experience with firearms to the range, and can provide them with a safe and respectful education on shooting, you should jump at it. We can all be ambassadors for the shooting world if we play our cards right.
Hey Andrew,
As I love the shooting sport, I love to share it with others. While here in Europe sharing my hobby with others is not always as straightforward as it would be in the US, I do find myself frequently giving initiations to novices. I’d say about a third of the people I’ve given initiations to are women. And overall, I must agree that more often than not, women will pick up shooting (accurately) faster than men. There are less preconceived notions and more attention to what is being taught to them. Of course, I do not turn initiations into boring lessons as that would only scare interested people away, but all in all, women are more open to correction than men.
I however feel that I need to challenge two assumptions made in your blog post:
1) I’ve found that women are quite fond of heavy kickers if you give them proper training on how to grip them. For me indoor pistolshooting initiations mean I bring along the following guns: X-Five AL (single action), Sphinx 2000 (SA/DA), Beretta 87 Target (SA .22LR) & Manurhin MR-73 (5.25″ .357Mag). More often than not, the women seem to prefer the Manurhin, eventhough it’s loaded with some stiff .357 Magnums.
2) When I started giving initiations, I also figured it was best to start soft & work up to the big stuff. My own mentor (a veteran instructor himself & avid IPSC shooter) challenged me on this one day. He said I should try it the other way around & see how that goes. While the feedback from the shooters remained about the same, the actual results we saw on paper vastly improved! I could not believe my eyes. From what I’ve seen in practise, starting off with a heavy hitter (safely of course, after proper training on grip & stance) seems to yield better results since from there on, the recoil becomes softer & softer, allowing them to concentrate on shooting itself rather than handling or anticipating the ever increasing recoil.
As such, my current modus operandi is to start off with 2 shots from the MR-73 (leaving an empty chamber between both, to prevent mishaps .500S&W-style), then followed by a cylinder or two of normal shooting. Then we move on to centerfire pistols for as long as they like, and when they start to tire a bit, we move on to .22LR. When that’s done they get to go back and shoot whatever they feel like. With women, more often than not they decide to finish it off with the .357Mag. 🙂
Now, I cannot say if this approach will work for you (or the people you introduce to the sport), but I’d like you to give it a shot and see how this approach works out for you.
Okay, I’ll say it. This is the most idiotic approach I’ve heard of. I dont give a rat’s ass if women “like the heavy kickers”. They need to learn basic gun operation on something manageable. No, I’m not going to “try it”, as I don’t think gun safety needs experimentation.
You’re welcome to disagree with my suggestion, but calling it idiotic and unsafe either means you did not read it or did not understand it. Nothing mentioned in my comment was “unsafe”. I even described steps to make it safer to start off with (i.e. not loading consecutive rounds to prevent accidental double fire) as well as first teaching them proper grip…
As a follower of your blog from day 1, as well as your youtube channel, I’m very disappointed both at your inability to remain civil as well as your unability to be open minded about things we take for granted. As said before, I was convinced of your point of view myself, until I saw proof to the contrary.
GVD, I am Andrew Tuohy, not Andy.
My apologies about the mix-up!
My apologies about the mix-up! You’re welcome to remove the previous comment in that case.
Oh hey, I took a woman shooting. Her grandfather used to take her but hasn’t for many years and she was bugging me to take her, so I did. I feel like I’ve accomplished something on time rather than my usual very-very-late (even though she has been asking me for months).
Andrew, you are an incredible teacher. Thank you for the lessons.
The dry firing part was an unexpectedly helpful exercise–you probably eliminated a lot of bad shots by making me look at and then learn how to minimize the muzzle deflection associated with pulling the trigger. I will probably start there with any weapon I ever fire.
If you ever open a school for this, it would be a cool exercise to track stats and see what methods get the best results. I bet you would have to teach a lot of people to get past the variations between students though. If n<20, I'm not gonna put too much stock in what GVD had to say up there.
Way to go inventing random holidays. I can't wait for national take an old friend skydiving from a hot air balloon day. I'm thinking it'll be in early May.