By: Brett Johnson

Cheryl Weissmann of Camarillo owns a 9 mm handgun, a .22-caliber automatic pistol and a Taurus revolver. She likes to go to Shooters Paradise in Oxnard at least twice a month and pop off a few rounds as a way to blow off steam.

Over the years, Kim Carsey of Moorpark has "fired just about everything — shotguns, Tommys, 9 millimeters"

Ventura resident Carly Gregory, a firearms newbie barely into her 20s, ticked off a list of guns she shot at a clinic in Rose Valley above Ojai this summer — a .22 Smith & Wesson handgun, a 9 mm Beretta and a .357 Magnum.

More and more women have taken up guns and gone to shooting ranges in recent years. The story has drawn attention nationally, and local women say they've definitely noticed more of their gender flanking them on the firing lines.

The Women on Target instructional and shooting clinic at Rose Valley this summer, a National Rifle Association event, was packed. Organizer Nina Neuron of Santa Paula said she had to turn away more than 40 women, adding, "And that's when I stopped counting." About a third of the roughly two dozen female participants, Neuron noted, had never fired a gun before.

Self-defense is one of their interests, but local women say they're also in it for fun and sport. Some are competition target shooters. Some just want to shoot recreationally with spouses, family or friends. Some are hunters. Some are NRA members.

The Women on Target clinics have grown almost 20-fold in six years. The program had 13 events and 496 participants nationally in 2000 and 237 clinics and 6,945 shooters last year, said Ashley Varner, a spokeswoman at NRA's Virginia headquarters.

Among shooting sports, Varner said, "women are the largest growing new demographic. It's one of the final sports hurdles that women are breaking into."

So much so, she said, that manufacturers are designing handles and pistols to fit women's hands. Gloves, clothing and sporty bags for concealed-carry firearms also are being made with women in mind, she added.

Target bashing

Many shooters are women with professional jobs.

Weissmann, a 38-year-old computer systems manager, had never handled or fired a gun until about a year ago. She went with a co-worker to Shooters Paradise, an indoor range, and was "surprised it was so easy."

It looked easy at a session last week. Weissmann shuttled a paper target (a figure of a torso and head of a man) about 5 yards down one of the 14 shooting stalls there and plugged away, alternating her 9 mm and the .22.

Amid loud pops (even with earphones on), she split the target. Bullets blasted through and hit a soft pile of shredded tires along the back wall about 50 feet down the gallery and the shells fell around her feet. She pushed a button to retrieve the sheet; the spread was admirably small with both firearms and particularly tight with the .22, which lacks the 9 mm's kick.

Weissmann threw the sheet in the trash and rated her performance "pretty good." She once kept a sheet when the spread was all in the orange, she said, motioning to a colored box that represents the center of center.

Pop-culture images of the hard-bitten babe with a gun or the gun-totin' mama — to borrow two of Neuron's phrases — are taking a hard hit.

"Women are realizing that there's nothing particularly unfeminine about being a shooter," Neuron said. "You can still wear lipstick and high heels."

Shooting enthusiast Stephanie Fuller of Ventura put it more succinctly: "Stereotypes? I don't care."

Firing off shots

Fuller, a 52-year-old mortgage loan processor, took her daughter, Gregory, to the clinic.

"It was a great mother-daughter bonding thing," Fuller said.

Progeny agreed. Gregory, a 23-year-old pharmacy technician and student, said: "I want to know how to use a gun. Plus, it was spending some quality time with my mom."

Times are changing, said Neuron, a 59-year-old Web and database designer.

"Now," she said, "women are saying: Hey, wait a minute. If the man can do it, I can do it.' And in most cases, they find they do well at it."

It led her to fire off this salvo: "In this country, we equate boys with guns — but women are better shots."

The women are aware this puts them amid such polemic, hot-button and endlessly tossed-around issues as gun control, violence and the Second Amendment. It's easy to see where they stand on such topics.

"I support people being able to have their own arms," said Carsey, a 49-year-old stay-at-home mom.

Neuron is a member of both the NRA and the Ojai Valley Gun Club, the one that meets at the Rose Valley range. So is Mary Osborn of Ventura, a 59-year-old senior executive assistant for an international safety training and consulting company who can wax forth on the differences between trap and skeet shooting.

The nation, Osborn opined, has so many gun laws "it's ridiculous." Most of the time guns are used maliciously, she said, it's by criminals who are going to find a way to obtain them anyway.

Neuron took umbrage at the charge that if a handgun hadn't been present, the murder wouldn't have occurred. "Wrong!" she fired back. "If there hadn't been a handgun present, the murder would have occurred with a knife or by some other means.

"Can guns be misused?" she continued. "Yes, but there has to be an intent for them to be misused."

These are but a sampling of the many labyrinthian tunnels the myriad arguments can go down. Guns are dangerous and potentially harmful, Weissmann said. "Yeah they can be," she added, "if you don't know how to handle them."

Security within reach

Self-defense is on their minds, the women say. Most states allow some form of concealed-carry firearms.

Osborn keeps a gun in her house for protection. She thinks about it when she knows her husband is going to be out of town. She also has a shot-up target up in her garage as a mild warning to any intruders, letting them know she can fire a gun.

"It just gives me a secure feeling," she said. "I know it's there, and I know how to load it."

Weissmann lives alone. "I never thought I would need a gun, but you read about all these people breaking into people's homes," she said, adding that she keeps one of her guns near her bed.

Fuller is away by herself a lot. She thinks about it, even when she goes into a gas station restroom on the road.

"Our society has gotten to the point where there are a lot of mean people out there," she said. "I don't want to be a victim. I know women who have been raped, and they never get over it. That's a lot of baggage to carry around."

Her daughter, Gregory, said that if she ever is out on her own, she'd want a gun around for protection.

Said Neuron: "People are going back to the realization that it is not in the purview of the police to protect them. You have to be the first line of defense."

Women's interest in being that at home, knowing how to use firearms and getting training for certain situations has led some to dub them "security moms," the NRA's Varner noted.

"They are a new voice in the female political community," she said — especially post-9/11.

Neuron has had to defend herself twice in her life — "It wasn't pleasant, but I survived them." In neither case was she armed; in both cases, a gun would not have helped, she said. But her experience with guns and shooting enabled her "to recognize that there was a hazard."

"That awareness," she said, "is a huge part of learning how not to be a victim."

Shooting also helped her to build confidence — an asset others also cited — that she could handle dicey situations. Using a gun, she indicated, is low priority.

"If I shoot someone, I'm going to have a very, very good reason for doing so," she said.

And, like the others, she hopes she never has to do so.

The lure, and a word on safety

Guns have a visceral attraction, enthusiasts say. Shooting one also is empowering.

"I love it," Osborn said. "It's very relaxing and it puts you in a zone. It's self-invigorating."

Fuller said she never thought she'd enjoy guns. Her father committed suicide with a gun when she was 7, and she subsequently was afraid of them much of her life. But she started shooting about 18 years ago and liked it, especially as a stress reliever.

"It's really fulfilling to do," she said. "After I shoot, it's like I've had a full-body massage."

Gregory, who had shot only once prior to the Rose Valley clinic, said she felt shaky at first. But with training, she was soon comfortable. She picked up a .357 Magnum with a scope and hit the bull's-eye on her first shot, which she thought "was pretty cool."

"It's great recreation," Gregory said. "You don't realize how much concentration and skill it requires."

While guns are a discovery for some, others have been around them almost their entire lives. Carsey grew up in the San Fernando Valley with brothers and recalled going off to the mountains near Gorman to shoot.

Neuron's grandmother and family grew up in rural Kern County in the 1880s.

"They didn't shoot intruders," Neuron said, "but they did shoot for meat. Many times, they'd shoot a rattlesnake on the porch and it'd end up in the kettle."

She began shooting when she was 6 (her dad started her on a Mark II air pistol), hoisted her first rifle at 10, and later went to a junior rifle club in Woodland Hills.

Neuron hopes to have another Women on Target clinic next year on the last weekend in May. Participants are taught to handle, load, unload and clean guns safely.

She contends shooting is a safe sport. Ranges have a "zero-tolerance policy." If a situation looks unsafe, activity is stopped immediately. That can include targets set too close to the firing line so that a ricochet is a risk, or the occasional deer that wanders through outdoor venues. They also check to make sure muzzles are pointed downrange.

As a gun owner, Osborn noted, safety has to be the top priority. She cringes when she hears about accidental shootings and wonders if the person involved was thinking about safety the entire time they were handling the gun.

"If you are safe and responsible, it can be a lot of fun," she said. "It's a wonderful opportunity as a sport."

A bullet, Neuron noted, can travel anywhere from 800 to 3,200 feet per second. That's a helluva thing to comprehend, an object that can travel easily more than a mile in the time it takes to read this sentence.

"I'm deathly afraid of any firearm not under my control," she said, "and I treat those under my control with considerable circumspection."