Nra Focuses On ‘New Audience’ Of Women For Membership, Training

Self-defense is the bottom line of the National Rifle Association’s ongoing campaign to draft women and teach them how to shoot.

Women make up 15 percent of the membership of the organization, which still is dominated by white middle-aged males.

But they constitute a growing segment of the people trained by the NRA, so the organization is revising its gun-training and ownership courses to better accommodate them.

Leadership is sympathetic. The NRA’s president is a woman, Marion Hammer, as is its chief lobbyist.

“We have a new audience,” Hammer said Sunday, the last day of the group’s three-day convention here. “We’re trying to meet that need. There are a lot of people buying firearms for protection who have not been gun owners in the past.”

The NRA began a women’s section in 1990 and started sponsoring self-defense workshops around the country in ‘93. Last year, 90 “Refuse to Be a Victim” workshops were held in 32 states.

Women, considered important allies in the NRA’s fight against gun control, can exercise their right to bear arms by buying guns to protect themselves, says the NRA.

“We are living in a more dangerous society than we were living in in the past,” said Evelyn Donnell, a self-described “pistol-packing grandma” from LaGrande, Ore.

But, in fact, violent-crime rates are dropping around the country.

“But you have great difficulty believing that if your next-door neighbor has been mugged,” Hammer said. “The papers are full of crime; the electronic media are full of crime. … So the perception is that crime is getting worse.”

A recent national study, including Seattle’s King County, found that women in homes with guns and a history of domestic violence are more likely to be killed. And a King County study found that guns in the home are more likely to be used for committing suicide or killing a family member than for slaying an intruder.

But the convention crowd shrugged off such findings.

And it cheered a panel of four women who have testified against gun control.

Gina Cushon of Colorado Springs, Colo., described shooting and killing a neighbor who was breaking down her door.

Josie Cash, a pizza delivery-woman from Rockford, Ill., told how she had scared away three would-be robbers by producing a pistol.

Charmaine Klaus of Waterford, Mich., told how a robber had entered the convenience store where she was working, killed her co-worker and wounded her but fled after she shot him in the mouth.

Sammie Foust repeated her father’s advice: “Shoot to kill.”

“Bad dogs bite when they’re wounded,” she said. “Dead dogs don’t bite.”