Rant: Girls Holding Guns

By Gabby

Everyone is entitled to their own version of fun, but frankly I'm sick of all the half naked women holding guns on Facebook and similar sites.  I don't take issue with people who want to look at women holding weapons.  I've said before, I see nothing wrong with taking sexy photos for your partner. People are entitled to look at whatever gets them revved up (as long as its legal).  I'm also not knocking XXX sites. That's where those photos belong.  My beef is with groups who portray themselves as gun enthusiast communities but who often post the afore mentioned images just to increase their follower count.

Many gun toting women have, at one point or another, run into a person who assumes we are less than capable of handling a gun, simply because we are female. When at the range, we'd prefer to impress with our skills than with our curves. At my range, where I know almost all of the employees, I appreciate the respect I receive.  Still, it would be nice to walk into a gun store and be treated more like an equal and less like a child who has wandered away from her daddy. The issue is, photos of bikini-clad models holding guns do nothing to help us be taken seriously as shooters. In many cases they perpetuate the idea that a woman with a gun is an uneducated hazardous joke and should only be considered in a sexual light.

I imagine some might argue, "We're not idiots. We can tell the difference between a serious female shooter and a model holding a gun." My response to these people would be, "Great! Then you're not the object of this rant." However, I have another concern and it affects all of us shooters;  The models in these photos are often improperly handling their weapons, with their fingers on triggers and the like.  This may mislead new shooters.  Do you want to slide into a lane next to a newbbie who doesn't know and follow the four rules? When groups represent themselves as a knowledgable source for shooting information and then display these pictures, people can get confused.

As for arguments about children stumbling across these images on Facebook and the poster's right to freedom of speech, I find these arguments misguided and unintelligent. It is the responsibility of a parent to protect an impressionable child. Further, freedom of speech does not have anything to do with Facebook speech and besides, just because it is legal to act in a certain way, doesn't mean said action is right.

Now that you've allowed me to make my points I release you to go and spend your days looking at naked people holding whatever gets you off, puppies, tire irons...whatever.  My only request is that, before you click "like" on another Sexy Gunner page, or "share" another bikini/gun photo, you consider our female shooting community as a whole.

P.S. As I delve deeper into the online/gun community I have had conversations, related to this topic, that reveal that many different perspectives are floating around out there. I fully intend to explore the topic from another slant in the very near future.

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