The Smallest Minority

100% agreement. If you look at the latest issue of A. First Freedom, there is more stuff about women shooters and mg'ers trying to cater to women shooters. We need much, much more of that.

One at a time, Bubba... one at a time, we're going to win this battle.

Take the time to volunteer for your Women on Target events, as a firearm instructor I do that alt least three times a year and bring my own guns for them to use. We need that other 50% of the voting population to keep our rights.

I enjoy shooting but my wife has never fired a gun. She is not anti-gun, she likes that I take our kids shooting. I would like to get her to join us but she has repeatedly told me that she has "No interest in shooting a gun." I think I know why.

She is a doctor who saw several young people with gunshot wounds in the trauma and ER rotations of her training.

One case she was directly involved with involved a teen who shot his younger brother, while playing with a revolver he found in a Baltimore park (and I thank God daily for my current job in Austin). Normally trauma cases in Baltimore went to the Univ Maryland trauma center, but the kid lived just up the street from Hopkins, so he was rushed there while my wife was working in the ER. The younger brother was given an exploratory laparotomy to find and stop his abdominal bleeding. Essentially he was gutted like a fish in the ER and then put back together. My wife assisted the surgeon doing the work. The kid died of overwhelming sepsis after about 3 weeks. She followed his case all the way down to the grave. This was one of several gunshot woulds she saw there and elsewhere.

Heck, Baltimore was a busy place for trauma surgeons. Once I was speaking to a nurse in that same Hopkins ER, when she looked over my shoulder and said in a perfectly calm voice to the youth who had walked up behind me, "Hon, have you been shot?" The kid was holding one arm out with another, and blood was dripping onto the floor from his fingertips. He got treated right away. Baltimore sucked in the 90's and has not gotten better since I moved.

I have never gotten my wife to show any interest in my firearms. She understands and accepts that guns are useful for home defense, and that guns are not intrinsically evil, and that hunting is a fun and useful sport. She just does not personally want anything to do with guns. I have gotten her through basic familiarization, one time each, with every firearm I own. Beyond handling each gun for a moment to show she can clear the action and render a gun "safe" she wants nothing to do with them.

Any suggestions on how to overcome these negative experiences and get her to come to the range a time or two? I would like her to be able to defend herself if necessary, and further agree with your posts that shooting a gun would be positive for her, especially in coming to terms with her negative experiences.

Mike, honestly I think about the only thing you can do is be happy that she supports your ownership of guns, and approves of your taking the kids out shooting.

I don't think there's much you can do to get her to change her mind when it comes to her shooting, however. Unless and until she feels a need, she's not going to change her position, and hopefully she will never be in a position where she feels a need.

No matter what you do, don't push. The only suggestion I can make is to - very gently, somewhat humorously - ask her if she'd like to go to the range with you every time you go. Make it a rote, and never, ever ask twice or say "are you sure?"

Maybe, just maybe, one time she'll answer "yes."

Thanks, that is what I do already. I suspect that she'd be an Annie Oakley herself if she tries. As for self-defense, she already carries FOX spray and more importantly has a situational awareness far beyond that of an average person. I suppose this is due to her having years of interactions with very, um, interesting people in hospitals.