Several months ago I read a discussion about teaching women to shoot. In it was this gem (written, obviously, by a male of the species) about what a “woman’s class” should entail: “I would put a greater emphasis on field stripping, taking the gun down and putting it back together. Our society doesn’t encourage women to mess with machines, demystifying the gun as a machine instills confidence.” This comes from the same mindset that says a really important part of a shooting class is a drawn-out explanation of how the primer ignites the gunpowder and the difference between rimfire and centerfire.

As I’ve said before, it’s silly to think that a woman who has mastered the complexities of driving can’t figure out what a slide stop lever does. To take my automobile analogy a bit further, it’s silly to think that a woman needs to know how to take an engine apart to “instill confidence” in her driving ability.

Don’t get me wrong – if she doesn’t have someone who will do the job of cleaning and oiling her gun, she needs to learn to do it herself. The gun has to be maintained, and someone has to do it; it’s simply part of shooting. However, to label that maintenance as “demystifying” the gun and “instilling confidence” is nonsense. If she doesn’t have confidence from proper training and regular practice, knowing how to field strip her Glock isn’t going to give it to her any more than knowing how to replace a crank seal is going to make her a more confident driver.

I think it’s more important for her to spend her limited training time and money learning how to defend herself efficiently, how to make the bad guy go away with the least expenditure of her defensive resources, than it is to repeatedly practice the disassembly of her pistol.

-=[ Grant ]=-