Friendly and Certified Firearms Training for Women Since 2011

CNN Analyst: Women Carrying Guns Is Not Practical

We invite Mr. Fuentes and his colleagues at CNN to become more familiar with female gun owners, our gun-carrying lifestyle, values, and abilities. Many women come into gun ownership with the primary purpose of protecting themselves. They turn to A Girl & A Gun for information and training.

Redefining Plinking

Because the name plinking is derived from the sound a .22 bullet makes on a target, it suggests that time at the range doing this activity is not serious practice time. You may even hear, “I’m just gonna go plink some rounds.” Any time you can get to a range and do live-fire shooting with any gun of any caliber should have some purpose behind it. Without focus you are just wasting ammo and potentially picking up bad habits.

Top 10 Tips for Flying with Firearms

The airport security process is a hassle whether you have your firearm or not. TSA agents are there to identify any breaches from intentional weapons to inadvertent mistakes of a forgotten pocket knife or shell casing. They’re just doing their job and you can make the process easier by educating yourself and following these ten tips. A good attitude and a smile goes a long way at the airport. Here are the Top 10 tips for flying with firearms.

Shooting Steel: Safety Guidelines

Shooting steel is fun! You hear the “ping!” when you hit the target, and can often save you time and money from shοoting paper targets. However, shοoting steel can be dangerous if you use the wrong caliber or shοot at the wrong distance. Here are 6 guidelines to stay safe.

Intimate Partner Violence: Training for the Unthinkable

By Sandra Kozero and Tracy Thronburg. More than half of female homicides are by an intimate partner. Women must have resources and train for the unthinkable. This article lists 10 ways to train against Intimate Partner Violence.

AG & AG Roadmap Navigates Training Journey

Congratulations! You have decided to become your own first responder, what now? The simple answer is that you need to go get trained up. The reality is not so simple; knowing where and how to get good training can be overwhelming, time consuming, and become very costly. The good news is it doesn’t have to be if you have a well-balanced training roadmap.

3 Safe Places for Your Self-Defense Pistol

By Tammy Hunter. There are three safe places for your self-defense pistol: (1) in your hand, (2) in your holster, or (3) locked in your safe. Once you’ve made the decision that a handgun will be part of your self-defense plan you must learn new habits and routines to ensure the 24/7 safety and security of that tool.

Dry Fire Safety Rules

Dry Fire Practice can be a great way to improve your skills; however, you must exercise extreme caution when pulling the trigger in your home. It is critical that you follow these five dry-fire safety rules.

Establish a Safe Direction

Anytime you are handling a firearm, you must follow the 4 Rules of Gun Safety with great care. When you’re at a range, it’s very clear what is down range, but what if you are at your home, a hotel, a classroom, or somewhere else where you have to manipulate your firearm? Rounds go through walls and can leave houses and buildings. If you’re not in a place with a proper backstop, you must establish what is a safe direction that can minimize damage if a round was accidentally discharged.

3 Simple Steps to Improve Your Shooting Skills

A Girl & A Gun facilitators offer “mini-clinics” that cover the 5 Fundamentals of Accurate Shooting at most Girls’ Night Out (GNO) events. In the interest of safety, ladies who attend a GNO receive a whole lot of new information in a very short period of time. Once your facilitator sees that you are consistently safe with your gun handling, it’s her job to be available to answer questions and offer pointers to keep you safe. Your facilitator is a fantastic resource, but making the commitment to develop skills requires that you take three simple steps.

Pistol Grips to Avoid

When a shooter has a poor grip on her pistol, she may experience a malfunction or difficulty achieving target accuracy. The grips shown are not dangerous per se, but they are techniques to avoid. They are often seen in movies and typically reflect the lack of real firearms training. Grips to avoid include: Tea Cup […]

Shooting With Your Support Hand

There are times, both in competition and self-defense, that you may need to shoot with your support hand. In competition, the course of fire may call for it or in a self-defense situation, you may not have use of your strong hand. Practicing shooting with your support hand is an important skill to develop.

NRA Certification Is a Strong Foundation on Which to Lay Down Tracks

By Heather Eckert. If you want to be a firearms instructor, the NRA Instructor Certification is a great place to start for a strong foundation. My NRA Certification was a respected resume credential that opened doors to new employment and allowed me to advance well beyond basic Pistol Instructor.

Creating a Nation of RifleWOMEN

A dozen ladies from the Austin, New Braunfels, and San Antonio Chapters of A Girl & A Gun came together in south Texas at Lone Star Handgun to attempt to accomplish the prestigious Rifleman badge with Project Appleseed in a Ladyseed two-day class. Project Appleseed assembled a fantastic group of mentors that included a shoot boss, multiple line bosses, instructors, instructors-in-training, and Applecore volunteers, along with the Texas State Coordinator, to teach to basic skills of rifle marksmanship and the rifleman’s role in the United States’ independence from England.

When Disaster Strikes — And You’re Unarmed

When disaster strikes, it can be very motivating to buying your first gun. We find ourselves vulnerable to Mother Nature, our infrastructure (power, levies, etc.), and the unknown. You may have never considered getting a firearm, but now feel open to the idea. Your story is mine.

Clearing a Stoppage with Tap/Rack/Back

When a shooter, regardless of level of instruction, experiences a stoppage, you must go through our standard correction steps. They are simple and effective, and above all, the safest and fastest way to put the gun back in battery. Just as you know your firearm safety laws, you should know your rapid clearing steps and use them every time. The TAP-RACK-BACK drill, also known as the immediate action drill, is a simple process to effectively deal with a minor malfunction.

5 Reasons You Don’t Want Free Training

Shooting is an expensive hobby and it can break the bank to buy guns, gear, ammo, and more. As you’re looking for places to cut corners, don’t skimp on a training budget. Even if you’re tempted to solicit firearms instructors to let you audit their classes, here are five reasons you don’t want free training.

Practice Your Emergency Plan

In this situation, the injured competitor had a minor wound that was able to be dressed quickly with minimal blood loss, shock, and risk of infection. However, if the wound been worse, or if there not been trauma kits immediately available, the competitor could have died. This underscores the importance of having a detailed emergency plan, rehearsing it, and discussing it at every event.

Gear Review: Voodoo Tactical Mini Tobago Backpack

My final analysis is that the Voodoo Tactical Mini Tobago Pack has proven itself to be a great all-around, multi-purpose day pack. It is sturdy and roomy, without being so oversized as to be unwieldy for grab-and-go use. But it also has the features of a much larger “tactical” pack, making it capable and organized where other daypacks fail. I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up.

How will I know when to use force or deadly force?

The most important question you can ever ask is, how will I know when it is time to use deadly force? If and when you ever find yourself in that moment of truth, here is a checklist that will run through your head. Your fight-or-flight will do a quick inventory of your options and depending on your circumstances will determine your permissible level of force.

Overcoming Gun Phobia

The word phobia is defined as an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something. You may or may not identify yourself as having a true gun phobia, maybe just a fear of the unknown, nervous because you don’t know anything about firearms or what to expect the first time you fire a gun. […]

How to Grip a Handgun

A proper grip helps better manage recoil and muzzle rise, and helps a shooter with accuracy, speed, and retention. The hands should be as high on the gun as possible. The handgun should fit in the hand to be straight like an extension of the shooter’s arm. The support hand’s fingers should wrapped around the front of the strong hand, so that all four fingers overlay the three lower fingers of the strong hand. While the strong hand squeezes the pistol with front-to-rear pressure, the support hand clamps pressure from the sides. This gives 360-degree pressure on the pistol providing a stable grip.

Sight Alignment

In order for your shot to reach its intended location on a target, a shooter must have sight picture and alignment. Sight alignment is the symmetry between the front sight and rear sight. Your front sight should be in the exact center of the rear sight, at the same height of the rear sight. Remember the old adage: equal light, equal height.

4 Ways to Support Your Host Range

We wouldn’t have places to train if it weren’t for our host ranges, so we want our ranges to be successful! Here are 4 ways to appreciate your range for hosting A Girl & A Gun events.

How to Clean Your Shotgun with Swab-its

By Michele Makucevich. When it comes to maintaining firearms, Swab-its’ Bore-tips offer improved barrel cleaning and lubrication while the Gun-tips line offers four distinct sizes and lengths of swabs to ensure cleaning and lubrication of the harder to reach areas that are often neglected. What you need: shotgun rod, solvent, lubricant, Swab-its Bore-tips in correct gauge, Swab-its 9 piece Gun-tips, a rag or paper towels. In this article, we address cleaning the Over-Under Shotgun. To demonstrate, we will clean and lubricate a Beretta Silver Pigeon.

How to Clean Your Revolver with Swab-its

By Michele Makucevich. Swab-its’ Bore-tips offer improved barrel cleaning and lubrication while the Gun-tips line offers four distinct sizes and lengths of swabs to ensure cleaning and lubrication of the harder to reach areas that are often neglected. In this article, we will address cleaning the Revolver. To demonstrate, we will clean and lubricate a Taurus Tracker .357 Magnum in titanium.