OWINGS MILLS: Clad in a pink T-shirt that reads “A girl and a gun,” firearms instructor Charneta Samms shows a group of women how to get a proper grip on a pistol.

Around them, shots ring out and casings pile on the floor at a shooting range near the eastern US city of Baltimore, where more and more of the visitors are women.

“Unfortunately, the world’s getting a little bit crazy,” said Samms, 49, who runs the local branch of A Girl & A Gun, a women-only gun club. “And so I think it’s important for women to be able to defend themselves,” she said.

Like Samms and her trainees, a growing number of women are choosing to own guns, taking an increasingly prominent role in the popular American pursuit.

The change is happening amid rising social and political turmoil in the United States following the Covid-19 pandemic.

One of the women attending Samms’ training course on a recent evening is Kenya Watkins, a high school geometry teacher from Baltimore, a city whose notoriously high crime rate inspired the legendary TV series “The Wire.” Watkins, 49, says it was the fear for her safety and the safety of her daughter, who was 24 at the time, that prompted her to start firearms training.

“I didn’t want her to be anybody’s victim, being a young African-American woman living alone in Baltimore city,” she said.

For decades, the typical gun owner in the United States was a rural white man with conservative political views. But that is changing as more women purchase guns and learn how to use them.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2023