By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
“Gun rights are women’s rights!”
Robyn Sandoval
That’s the word from Robyn Sandoval, one of a panel of five women who delivered a strong, unified message to a receptive audience at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Phoenix. Sandoval, co-founder and executive director of “A Girl and A Gun Women’s Shooting League,” is also the Texas delegate to the “D.C. Project” that annually brings a woman from each state to the nation’s capital for lobbying and networking with lawmakers and one another.
Her message to lawmakers is blunt: “Moms that demand you take our rights do not speak for me.” She told the crowd that her mission is to “take the word ‘Mom’ back” from gun control extremists.
“Moms Demand Action took it, and I want it back,” she declared.
She said gun control is not “common sense” because it focuses on law-abiding citizens. Sandoval also suggested that with women being the fastest-growing segment of the shooting public, it’s time for their voices to be heard forcefully.
Sandoval was preceded at the microphone during this panel discussion by Beth Alcazar, author of Women’s Handgun & Self-Defense Fundamentals, and associate editor of Concealed Carry magazine. Alcazar acknowledged to the conference that “most of the women who come to (firearms) classes did not grow up with firearms.”
Beth Alcazar
But that doesn’t make them any less eager or apt to learn, and she noted that many women have guns for self-defense because of abusive relationships or incidents. She said one in three women have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner. One in seven have been injured. One in five women, she said, have been raped and a large percentage of those have never been reported. More than 19 million women have been stalked, she added.
Most of the women who come to her classes did not have military or law enforcement backgrounds. Instead, she said, “They are just moms, grandmas, single women, married women; they are empowered to do something for themselves and the people they love.”
Alcazar also noted that the majority of gun owners, both men and women, cite personal protection as the reason they own guns.
She recalled the murder of a New Jersey woman, Carol Bown, who died in her own driveway from stab wounds inflicted by a man against whom she had a protection order. She died while waiting for a gun purchase permit to be okayed by the local police department, an application that had been gathering dust for weeks.
Esther Schneider
Another powerful voice on the panel belonged to Esther Schneider, founder and president of Strategic Alliance Arms and a former member of the National Rifle Association Board of Directors.
Schneider described herself as an unapologetic fund raiser for the Second Amendment. Schneider stepped down from the NRA Board earlier this year, briefly mentioning that it was a hard decision, and that “we have a lot of work to do.”
She acknowledged that women “are going to be the biggest threat in keeping the White House” in 2020. They are also the largest segment of handgun buyers in the country.
“It is up to us to make those paradigm shifts,” she said.
Her father taught her to shoot at age 5. She had older brothers. Her father explained it to her mother by noting that guns were in their home and the children needed to know proper gun safety and respect for firearms.
“I really enjoyed shooting and every time I had the opportunity to take someone to the range—especially people who weren’t excited; and that’s really grassroots. Getting people to the range. It is taking someone who has a formed opinion and changing it in a positive way.
Amanda Suffecool
Amanda Suffecool, host and producer for EyeOnTheTargetRadio.com, acknowledged that “we live right now in a very divided time.”
“This is the time for all of us to buckle down to work positively,” she advised. “Instead of saying negative things, we need to say ‘what can we do right now?’”
That applies to every activist; what can they do to improve things in their small circle of friends and acquaintances. She encouraged the women in the audience to be strong, and to watch their numbers growing.
Suffecool also talked about the women involved in the DC Project. She said they have been supportive and challenging, which has helped her to grow and keep pushing.
“It’s like when there’s an earthquake and it shoves the ground higher,” she observed. “That’s what they do for me.”
Cheryl Todd
Cheryl Todd, owner of AZ Firearms.com and co-host of Gun Freedom Radio, told about a recent experience she had, attending a conference that featured several panelists; professionals who had in common the fact that they “were always there for someone who had been a victim.”
However, nobody offered any recommendations about what to do in order to prevent violence or defend against an assault in the first place. The audience, said Todd, was looking for help and information, and the never heard about “the 200,000 times a year women prevent violence and assault by being responsibly armed citizens.”
“This is why I carry,” she stated.
During that panel discussion, Todd recalled, “I listened to words piled on top of words.”
“We hear women tell other women that guns, the very tool of self-defense that prevents violent attacks and rapes…are just not for us,” she said, “that moms, good moms; they don’t have those bad objects in their homes.
“The very same people who tell us not to protect and defend ourselves,” she continued, “the very same people who march and scream for the government to rob us of our rights to self-defense are the ones who will blame us when we have been brutalized, raped or murdered because we were unarmed, disarmed and defenseless.
“You are your own first responder in the immediacy of assault and violence you will be responding to what is happening to you,” Todd concluded, “and all those other people, those well-meaning people, they will come to help later, but not prevent, and this is why we must in every city, in every state, demand freedom now.”
