Since the inaugural Women's Forum in March, the NRA's Education and Training Division has been brainstorming ways to involve women in its programs. NRAblog has featured stories from several forum participants in their own words -- Penny Gilliam and Patricia Mcclelland Merydith -- and we're pleased to continue the series with NRA Certified Instructor Janet Katz.
Janet's story:
It never occurred to me as I was growing up that some day I would enjoy shooting or actually like being around people who appreciated firearms. I would have laughed off any suggestion of that kind. It was not me, never would be me, never could be me. Today, at Paladin Services LLC in Columbia, SC, I've been instructing shooters for 20 years -- and I enjoy every minute of it.
Mine was at least a mildly anti-gun family in Peoria, Illinois, where I was born just after World War II. I was created a Baby Boomer and shared many of my generation’s characteristics. My father Bob fought at Saipan during World War II. He had had his fill of guns in the war. Mother, Dorothy, shared his distaste for them. Cultured people with well-developed tastes in art, music, and literature simply did not belong anywhere near guns. Their women most certainly did not. Universities of the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s reinforced the aversion and made it unthinkable that I or my friends would have anything to do with guns. When I became an academic and came to work for a major university I shared the widespread assumptions of my generation and undoubtedly helped to spread the typical Baby Boomer hoplophobia.
No one then could have even imagined me now in any of the typical photographs from the past decade or so: Janet demonstrating a combat stance with her Glock 22 .40 S&W semi-automatic pistol; Janet using her 12 gauge Benelli M1 Super 90 or Remington 870 to show proper shotgun technique for a home defense situation; and Janet using her Rock River Arms M4 or her Arsenal AK-47 or her M1 Carbine to demonstrate close quarters combat situations. Nor could anyone have predicted that I would be actively engaged in teaching others like the me that once was and recruiting ordinary people to join the National Rifle Association.
I especially enjoy teaching women. Most of all I enjoy seeing women develop their self-confidence with handling firearms and become avid shooters. Some of our women students have gotten over their initial fear of firearms to become members of the local gun club, and several now compete in competition shooting.
Last week my husband and I taught a group of students for the NRA Personal Protection in the Home class that included three Air Force lieutenant colonels, a women veteran of Desert Storm, a physician, and a Boy Scout leader. It is heartening to know we have something worthwhile to teach them.