By gender, gun ownership especially boomed among women. Between 2019 and 2021, as gun purchases exploded, about half of firearm customers were women, according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Women were the most likely new gun-owner demographic during those years, researchers found.
Fox News Digital previously spoke with a female gun instructor, Robin Evans, who has trained nearly 5,000 women on gun safety. Evans explained in an interview this month that many women are refusing to become victims and are turning to firearms to better ensure that mission.
“I feel like every single day, there’s another woman who thought she would never pick up a gun… and they understand what type of world we live in right now.” Evans, the founder and owner of self-defense training company called Chicks with Triggers, told Fox News Digital earlier this month. “And, unfortunately, it gets more dangerous every single day. And so I think more women are starting to really come around to the fact that, ‘Hey, I never thought I would be here, but this is where the world is, so I gotta get prepared.’”
Evans said roughly 60% of her clientele have encountered dangerous and violent situations themselves, including domestic abuse, rape or kidnapping. Stories reported by Fox News Digital this year show many of the women who used their firearms to thwart violence did so against someone they knew, including ex-boyfriends.
A Florida woman, for example, turned the tables on her armed ex-boyfriend who showed up to her home on Easter Sunday and shot him dead with her own gun. Investigators at the time said the ex-boyfriend had “a prior domestic relationship” with the unidentified woman living in the home, and he traveled to the duplex armed with a gun to “confront” the woman.
— Emma Colton in Armed women nationwide refused ‘to be victims’ in 2023 as gun ownership increases
