Excerpts from a new research project released on Tuesday show the number of women involved in the shooting sports has increased over the last two years with some shooting disciplines seeing as much as a 189 percent boost.
Shoot Like a Girl, which offers gun-training classes geared towards women across the country, released some of the details of a survey it conducted in 2017. The company said its findings were compiled with data from more than 2,600 women shooters. It said the number of women who completed its survey allowed it to generalize the results to all women shooters with a 99 percent confidence level and 2.6 percent margin of error.
The company said the results are evidence that the number of women interested in guns and the shooting sports continues to grow each year.
"It is a known fact that women have been the fastest growing demographic for several years now, and we continue to grow," Karen Butler, president and founder of Shoot Like A Girl, said in a statement. "There is a chance that our data is a course correction for the industry, too, based on the responses received after our query of a sizable number of women. We have the unique opportunity with our social media and email lists to reach over 146,000 women who participate and/or are interested in shooting sports, and they were enthusiastic to provide their input."
Shoot Like a Girl said the trend is driven by both a desire for self-protection and recreation.
"People are looking for activities that they can have quality time with their families," Jeanine Sayre, a Shoot Like a Girl spokesperson, told the Washington Free Beacon. "While personal protection might be the driver for women to purchase a gun, when they go to the range and feel the confidence felt when hitting the target and realize that guns are safe when you practice the tenants of the NRA firearm safety rules—shooting becomes a fun activity."
The company said it plans to release more details from its survey at next week's SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.