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Mickey Lane’s tires crunched to a stop in a gravel parking lot in South Hill on a recent Sunday morning. The 42-year-old single mother stepped out of her car at Paul Bunyan Rifle & Sportsman's Club with her semiautomatic handgun.
Lane carried her unloaded Glock G43X to the pistol range, where more than a dozen women were gathered for a biweekly meeting of their shooting group, the Puyallup chapter of A Girl & A Gun, a national women’s firearms organization.
No men would enter the shooting bay for the next few hours — the group is for women only.
While guns remain a polarizing political issue in the United States, demographics of gun ownership are shifting. According to Gallup polling from 2019 through last year, 43% of American men own guns compared with 20% of women — but data indicates that gender gap has shrunk over the last two decades. While gun ownership overall has stayed steady in that time period (around 30% of adults), women are increasingly taking up arms for reasons ranging from safety concerns to sport and camaraderie.
In response, social events catering to women are popping up in the shooting community around Western Washington, as well as discounts and introductory gun safety courses. It’s causing a shift in an arena long dominated by men.
Serving as the safety officer on that spring morning in South Hill, longtime A Girl & A Gun chapter facilitator Christa Beasley also set the agenda. Her “A team” of assistants stood by to help. The meeting started with introductions and a safety briefing before the women moved to the shooting bench.
Lane found a spot at the left end of the bay as women around her chatted about their summer travel plans and new firearms. Pops of color appeared as the women unzipped their printed gun transport cases and placed neon-pink magazine loaders on the bench alongside unloaded pistols.
Women in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s were in attendance, ranging from competition shooters to new, first-time gun owners. Some have been with the group for a decade, while others, like Lane, were attending their first meeting with the club that Sunday.
“The range is hot,” Beasley called from behind the firing line, indicating that the women could begin shooting. Bullets soared downrange toward paper bull’s-eye targets.
That Sunday, a member took Lane under her wing, offering feedback on her stance and grip. The small adjustments resulted in immediate improvement.
“I’ve never hit a target like this before,” Lane exclaimed. The single mother from Tacoma grinned as she retrieved her marked-up target, earning high-fives and cheers from women she had just met.
Lane, once wary of firearms, has found a new identity as a gun owner in recent years.
“I kind of have to laugh at my perspective on guns before,” said Lane, who bought her first gun to protect her son. The 13-year-old now shoots in Paul Bunyan’s junior league. “I would say they are fully a part of our life, and I can’t imagine ever not being a gun owner again.”
“Never, ever, ever”
Lane bought her first gun two years ago. Before then, “never, ever, ever did I think I would be a gun owner.”
“I support gun-owning rights,” she said, “but I’ve seen nothing but horror stories in the news about how little kids get a hold of their parents’ handguns and shoot themselves.”
Things changed after a neighbor threatened to attack her and her son. Frustrated with the police response, Lane filed paperwork and paid for her first firearm. Three weeks later, after Washington state’s 10-day waiting period and some delays, Lane had her Glock in hand.
It initially collected dust in Lane’s apartment. She became a member at Paul Bunyan and made consistent trips to the range as she struggled to improve her accuracy, but “I was really starting to give up on my marksmanship before I found the ladies club,” Lane said.
Another Paul Bunyan member told Lane about the Puyallup chapter of A Girl & A Gun. The national organization’s goal is to support female shooters of all skill levels, providing a social space for women to connect with and learn from each other.
The Puyallup chapter has 70 active members and meets twice monthly. Participants range from women as old as 80 to teenagers attending with their mothers.
Lane originally intended to join the group just to improve her marksmanship. But after one meeting, she felt she’d found new friends.
“These are people that I can learn to grow with and confide in and trust,” she said. “I feel like they're going to be there for me even if I come to the range one day and I'm having personal problems.”
For Beasley, the chapter facilitator, meetings at the range serve as a safe place to ask questions and to learn from women who understand the female-specific considerations of gun ownership. Her father was a hunter, and her husband is a longtime firearm owner — but she said her sharpest firearms knowledge has been developed around other women.
“When I went to the range with my husband, he would load the gun and hand it to me,” Beasley said. “I’d fire, hand it back and he’d reload it.”
She believes firearms are “the greatest equalizer between the two sexes” so long as women are confident in their ability to safely handle them. In addition to shooting time at the range, chapter meetings focus on topics like how to pack a range bag or clean a gun.
Outside of A Girl & A Gun, Beasley is a paralegal and owns a firearm training business that offers women-only group classes and private sessions. She said women attend her classes for a variety of reasons, including sport, but safety concerns are the most common reason.
Gun ownership is a politically — and sometimes socially — divisive topic in Washington and across the United States. But Beasley has found people often express interest or curiosity when they find out she is a gun owner.
“It’s surprising how many people are like, ‘This (is) really cool,’” Beasley said.
Women teaching women
A few days later at Tacoma Rifle & Revolver Club in University Place, instructor Jane Milhans prepared for a four-hour firearm safety course.
Milhans, in her 60s with long blond hair, began teaching women how to defend themselves after two men broke into her house more than 20 years ago.
“When you’re going through it, some adrenaline takes over,” Milhans said. “You don’t want these guys doing it to someone else. Not wanting people to be a victim has always been with me.”
Both Milhans and Beasley attested to growing interest in gun ownership and competition shooting among women, as well as growing demand for female instructors.
In addition to volunteering to teach women-only firearm safety courses, Milhans frequents the state Legislature, where she has testified against many Democrat-sponsored gun control measures in recent years. (Washington lawmakers banned the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms in 2023, including the AR-15, and this spring, Gov. Bob Ferguson approved legislation to create a permit-to-purchase system for guns beginning in May 2027.)
Per the Gallup study, Republican women are leading the surge in female gun ownership. But shooting courses focus more on process and mechanics than politics. When women gather at local ranges, their conversations often concern family updates, travel plans or new firearms. (Naturally, though, former Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee takes some lumps at local ranges for his ban on magazines that hold more than 10 bullets.)
Milhans’ course includes classroom and range instruction covering the basics of pistol safety, state laws, storage and gun mechanics. One woman at a recent class wanted to address her discomfort around guns. Another was a recent retiree hoping to build self-defense skills before traveling in her new RV, and there was also a mother-daughter duo from Steilacoom, Pierce County.
Raquel Rohrer, 18, was home for the summer after her freshman year at Grand Canyon University. She joined her mother, 54-year-old Loujanna Rohrer, for the class. Neither had fired a gun before; Loujanna’s husband owns a firearm, and she is considering purchasing her own.
After two hours of classroom instruction, the class moved to the range. The first stop was one of the outdoor rifle ranges, where Milhans helped students shoot her personal AR-15 and another club member’s competition rifle.
The AR-15 — a semiautomatic rifle developed by Armalite — is perhaps America’s most polarizing gun, one used in multiple of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings. Ten states, including Washington, have banned its sale, though they are still legal to own here.
Washington legislators have cited concerns about violence when pushing for gun control: According to Everytown for Gun Safety analysis citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, the rate of gun deaths in Washington increased 42% from 2013 to 2022, compared with a 36% national bump. About 71% of these deaths are suicides, while 25% are homicides (compared with national rates of 57% and 40%, respectively).
Milhans pushes back against labels like “assault weapons.” She encouraged students in the classroom to think of the AR-15 as any other firearm, pointing out that it only fires one round with each pull of the trigger, just like any other semiautomatic weapon.
Loujanna Rohrer took a video on her phone as her daughter Raquel eased her finger down on the AR-15’s trigger. She raised her head, dropped the empty magazine onto the bench and turned to her mother with two thumbs-up.
“That was cool,” she said with a smile.
Rohrer grew up a military brat but “was never raised around guns,” she said, which led to “a fear factor and stereotype of what a gun is.” Now, as she considers purchasing her own gun as an adult, safety is her top concern.
“I want to be educated in owning one,” Rohrer said. “It’s good to go to a class and learn about it as a tool.”
The program ended at the outdoor pistol range, where participants received hands-on safety instructions and shot three pistols of different calibers.
Overall, the course was a meaningful experience for Rohrer and her youngest daughter.
“It made it a more positive experience because I could understand guns from the perspective of a female,” she said, “who might have a different reason for owning a firearm than a male.”
“It’s the community”
In Everett, four women approached a 10-yard firing line marked by plastic tables. They stood ready with 30 rounds apiece — a full magazine loaded into each of their guns, with two additional magazines on the table.
Martha Holschen, the leader of Ladies Shooting Club at West Coast Armory North, glanced down the line and gave the women the go-ahead. Their objective was to fire rounds in sets of three, with two shots to the paper target’s chest and one to the head.
Holschen was coaching her second session of the night, teaching a group of advanced markswomen. Up to eight Level 1 women gather each Thursday at 6 p.m. for an hour of guided shooting practice, followed immediately by the Level 2 women at 7 p.m.
Holschen and her husband co-own the range with Stephanie Kerns, who started the Ladies Shooting Club in 2016. The club meets four times each month to help women improve their handgun skills.
Christy Henderson, 47, was among the group of six that day. Henderson is from Lake Stevens but works as a project manager at a software company in downtown Seattle. She comes to the range each Thursday after work.
Henderson fired a gun for the first time last August and purchased a Smith & Wesson M&P 2.0 shortly after. She had a unique reason for learning to safely handle a firearm.
Her father owns guns, and when Henderson was named the executor of his will, she realized there would come a day when she would need to know how to load and unload a gun safely. Henderson had considered learning for years but was intimidated.
“I’m aware of how gun culture seems to be,” Henderson said. “I wasn't sure that I wanted to put myself into that.”
Henderson’s idea of a stereotypical gun owner fell on the opposite end of the political spectrum from her; she was concerned that classes might be unwelcoming or lack the safety instruction she wanted.
Inevitably, politics creep into the range from time to time (more often when men are around, Henderson said). But the attention is predominantly on safety and building skills.
A search for women-only introductory courses led her to West Coast Armory North. She said the range environment challenged her initial perception.
“That was the total opposite when I started taking these classes,” she said. “Even when I started taking classes that also had men in them, it was very welcoming. I could tell that there were people of different ideologies than myself, but we weren’t talking about that.”
By progressing through Level 1 of the Ladies Shooting Club and attending some events hosted by the newly founded A Girl & A Gun chapter in Everett, Henderson has built connections with the women she sees at the range.
Henderson graduated to Level 2 of the Ladies Shooting Club this year. Henderson achieved her goal of becoming more comfortable around her firearm, though the controlled explosion and loud bang of the gun still startles her when she fires. And she recently purchased her second gun: a Glock 48 with a green optic.
“People have asked me, ‘If you started doing this just so you were comfortable loading and unloading guns, why did you keep with it?’” Henderson said. “It’s the community.”
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