Category: Safety

Armed mom schools Congress on booming female gun ownership: ‘Refuse to stand by’

Women are considered one of the fastest-growing groups of gun owners in the United States, and a House Judiciary subcommittee this week will examine how gun ownership “empowers women across America” as crime spirals in many areas of the nation.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance will hold a hearing Wednesday morning, and a trio of female gun experts and instructors will appear to advocate for Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

Fox News Digital exclusively obtained a preview of testimony from one of the witnesses, Beth Alcazar, a U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) senior training counselor.

“I am a writer. I am an instructor. I am a doctoral candidate working toward my terminal degree in curriculum and instruction. But, first and foremost, I am a mother. And I have made a personal choice to live as a mom with a gun,” Alcazar will tell the subcommittee, chaired by Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs.

Alcazar is the editor of Concealed Carry Magazine and has authored a handful of gun training documents for the USCCA, including “Women’s Handgun & Self-Defense Fundamentals” and “Children’s Firearms & Safety Fundamentals.”

She will reflect in her testimony that women across the nation have taken self-defense issues into their own hands and are refusing to become the victims of violent crimes.

“For the women who walk across a dark parking lot every night after work. For the Realtors who show houses to strangers every week. For any young women who have shadows in their past. And for moms, like me, with children in tow. I think they would all agree: They refuse to stand by, idle and helpless. They refuse to become someone’s victim. They refuse to allow harm to come to the ones they love,” Alcazar will say in her testimony.

Since the pandemic, gun sales have hit record numbers, including when an estimated 23 million firearms were sold and more than 21 million background checks were conducted in 2020. The numbers smashed records and notably spiked at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 before jumping yet again in June of that year as protests and riots spread across the nation in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Gun ownership has especially boomed among women. Between 2019 and 2021, as gun purchases exploded, about half of gun customers were women, according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Women were the most likely new gun owner demographic during those years, researchers found.

Alcazar said crime has spiraled and women face “violent criminals — many with evil intent,” who “are terrorizing us.” But where violence and crime lurks, an armed woman has a better chance of defending herself from the unexpected, Alcazar’s testimony explains.

“This shouldn’t be the way that we live,” Alcazar will tell the subcommittee. “But it serves as a clear reminder that law-abiding citizens should be able to defend themselves from danger at all times. And any solution to better protect ourselves, our children and our communities should start with our God-given right to self-defense.”

The mother of three’s testimony explains that, through her work training Americans on firearm safety, she has seen “firsthand, a rich diversity as scores of American women are purchasing, training with and carrying firearms in the name of female empowerment.”

“For many women, this self-defense awakening has resulted in a new source of certainty, security, responsibility and equality that we might not have otherwise had,” her testimony states.

The USCCA, where Alcazar serves as a certified instructor and senior training counselor, was founded in 2003 and provides American gun owners with training and education on firearms and self-defense liability insurance through its membership program. The group includes more than 10,000 instructors across the nation, many of whom have reported seeing an increase in women seeking gun training.

Fox News Digital spoke to a USCCA instructor in New Mexico earlier this year who said that Native American women specifically were increasingly signing up for gun safety classes in the face of crime and violence.

“Almost every week we have a Native woman or someone close to family saying, ‘I’m really interested in taking this class and picking up a firearm because you see the numbers with the missing and murdered indigenous women and people,’” Joe Talachy, a USCCA instructor and owner of Indigenous Arms 1680 Ltd. Co., told Fox News Digital this summer.

Alcazar argues that gun ownership and training have fundamentally changed her as a person and mother, and she finds peace knowing that she is her “own protector” and her “family’s first responder.”

“The more I’ve trained, the more I’ve realized that I don’t have to wait for someone else to care for me or protect me. I am my own protector. And I am my family’s first responder. And being able to keep myself and those I love safe? I don’t think there’s anything more important than that,” Alcazar’s testimony says.

The hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday. Geneva Solomon, owner of Redstone Firearms in Burbank, California, and firearms instructor Shirley Watral are also scheduled to testify.

You don’t say

Explosion of concealed handguns means someone nearby is carrying

If You Want Peace, Prepare For War: Why All Should Be Armed

A lot of people get armed for a lot of reasons. Those reasons generally don’t matter all that much because we don’t have to provide a reason why we want to exercise our Second Amendment rights, but those reasons exist and are varied.

People who live in high-crime areas tend to prefer not to become a victim. Some people recognize bad things can happen at any time and place. Still others figure they’ll never need it, but are armed simply because they have the God-given right to be armed.

Yet the flip side is that a lot of people refuse to carry a firearm. They believe the world should be better than it is and that there’s no reason for any of us to have a gun.

My friend Yehuda Remer, aka The Pew Pew Jew, had an interesting post over at his site that I think we should talk a bit about. It starts with a story from the Old Testament. Jacob and his family, with all their riches, are on the road to meet his brother, Eisav, who sanctioned his murder 20 years prior and who thinks Jacob is already dead.

To prepare for this meeting, Jacob does three things. The first is to send an offering to Eisav to hopefully make peace. The second was to pray. It’s the third thing that leads to why I’m writing this.

Lastly, and the real reason I am writing this blog, is that Jacob prepared for war. He split his family into two different camps to spare one if Eisav decided to attack. Of course, he would be willing to fight but still ensured some of his family would live.

Why is this important? Why is the preparation for war so integral to Jacob even though he had God’s ear? What can we learn?

I am a Jew who carries a firearm. I write about guns. I use firearms regularly. I train people on firearms and educate them on their Second Amendment rights. Unfortunately, Jews get a bad rap because so many of them are anti-gun and anti-2A, which is true. I know many Jews from all walks of life who hate firearms and believe that guns have no place in society. Well, my question to them is, if guns don’t have a place in society, how do we explain the fact that Jacob prepared for war? How is exercising my Second Amendment and carrying a firearm on my person to ensure my family is protected any different than what Jacob did?

The answer is that there is no difference.

“Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war.

Exactly.

Look, I’d love to live in a world where there was absolutely zero chance I’d ever need my gun for anything but recreational shooting. We don’t live in that world, we live in this one.

As such, I can and should take all the steps one can think of to prevent myself from becoming a victim and, as a society, we should take all the steps we can to make it so crime disappears forever.

Those of us who are the praying sort should do that as well, pray that those who would become violent criminals and those who already have find another way forward with their lives.

But we shouldn’t rest exclusively on those.

We should want peace, but we should prepare for war. At least in a manner of speaking, anyway.

Violence can and will come for some of us. We can and should do everything we can to mitigate the risk of that, but some of us won’t be fortunate enough to escape that.

So, we should be prepared to meet that violence with the threat of force and a willingness to use violence in the defense of ourselves or others if need be.

Where Did New Gun Owners Come From and Where are They Going?

Our society is changing. Those changes caused many of us to buy a firearm. We see that crime is rising around us. We notice that criminals are no longer routinely caught by police and prosecuted in the courts. We consider moving to a safer location. (examples from California and New York) We decided that we need a gun to be safe. That chain of events might sound like mere speculation but a number of recent surveys have confirmed it. Almost 14 million of us bought a gun for the first time in 2020 and 2021. The increase in gun ownership will not lead to a significant change in political affiliation.

Personal protection is the main reason we buy a gun today. By a two-to-one margin, more of us think crime is getting worse rather than getting better. The margin increases to three-to-one when we consider crime in our inner cities. Those opinions come from a Harvard-Harris poll conducted only a few weeks ago in mid-November of 2023. Democrats think the increase in crime is because of a worsening economy while republicans think it is because criminals are not prosecuted for their crimes. Most republicans think that the police are afraid to do their job while most democrats disagree. By a four-to-one margin, voters in both parties think that laws about minor crimes like shoplifting should be rigorously enforced. Except for democrats, a majority of us blame woke democrat politicians and district attorneys who won’t prosecute crimes. Most of us think that the US justice department is focused on politics rather than stopping gangs and crime syndicates.

A majority of voters from both parties now think that it is necessary to own a gun for personal protection. Including independent voters, 63-percent of us now believe it is necessary to own a gun to prevent criminal attacks.

We acted on those personal motivations and gun ownership has grown over time. We’ve seen record gun sales for the last 50 months. We also have mixed data on the number of new gun owners. A Pew research poll from August said that 41 percent of us live in a household with a firearm. That estimate may be on the low side since a Gallup poll put the number at 44 percent. A recent NBC poll put the number at 52% of us who live with a gun in our home. The variance between different polling organizations are significant, but the trend of increased gun ownership is consistent.

We have to be skeptical about these polling numbers. A recent research report said that many of us don’t tell the truth to strangers on the phone when the strangers ask if we own firearms. The research report estimated that as many as 60 percent of adults might own a gun as compared to 30 percent reported earlier.

That is another part of our changing society. It now makes sense that we are reluctant to tell strangers whether we do or do not own firearms. Gun owners don’t want to be targeted and have their guns taken. Households without a gun feel more vulnerable if they admit they are disarmed. All of us have become more concerned about having our personal information gathered and sold. In addition, the precise details of the polling question are critically important.

Let me give a practical example to prove my point. My first auto accident was a dented fender on my parent’s car. My worst auto accident was as a passenger. I wouldn’t mention either of those accidents if you asked me about accidents where I was driving my car. The same situation applies to gun owners as applied to drivers. Many older teenagers and younger adults depend on using someone else’s firearm for protection when they are at home. Likewise, a husband or wife might carry a gun that is actually owned by their spouse.

It is undeniably true that the face of gun ownership is changing. The stereotypical gun owner used to be an old, white, rural male. That face is now a young, urban female minority. In short, gun ownership now represents the population at large. The older stereotype of gun owners was that they were politically conservative. It does not follow that new gun owners will follow suit and vote republican.

Gun ownership is unlikely to change voting patterns. Party affiliation is a stronger predictor of attitude towards firearm regulation than is gun ownership. In general, republicans who don’t own a gun are slightly closer to democrats. Democrats who own a gun are slightly closer to republicans. That said, the difference between the political parties is larger than the difference between gun owners and non-gun owners within the parties.

Owning a firearm is only one of many cultural differences that separate liberal politics from conservative politics. Given the Democrat party’s recent adoption of firearms prohibition, most liberal gun owners ignore their party’s position on guns and vote for liberal candidates anyway.

As usual, change happens at the margin. A centrist democrat who recently bought a gun may now see the Democrat party’s gun prohibitions as the issue that changed his vote.

Harvard Poll: 6 in 10 Voters Say Owning a Gun is a Necessary Part of Self-Defense Against Crime

A Harvard/Harris poll conducted November 15-16, 2023, shows six in ten voters believe owning a gun is a necessary part of protecting themselves from criminals.

Poll researchers asked: “Do you think crime and safety in your community is getting better, worse, or staying about the same?”

Forty-two percent of voters said “worse,” versus 21 percent who said better. (Forty-nine percent of independents were among those who said crime is worsening.)

Researchers asked, “Do you think you need to have a gun today in case you are attacked by criminals, or do you think owning a gun is unnecessary?”

A majority of voters across the board–whether Democrat, Republican, or independent–answered in the affirmative.

Broken down by party affiliation, 54 percent of Democrats said owning a gun is necessary, 77 percent of Republicans, and 56 percent of independents.

Moreover, a majority of American voters believe “woke politicians” are a driving force behind crime in the United States.

Fifty-five percent of voters concurred that “Woke politicians are to blame for rising crime,” while 45 percent disagreed. An even larger majority of voters–67 percent–support “removing DA’s who are soft on crime.”