Musical accompaniment: My 45 by Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs

I found this picture in the Hood Library, with no additional information other than that it was taken in 1914.

Hood Museum at Dartmouth University

I ran a search about women and shotguns and came across a 1909 article in an Ohio newspaper that struck me as interesting and funny (if you see the humor in absurd stereotypes).

After citing four cases in which a woman who had never fired a gun killed a man with her first shot, the article reads:

“There are many more, all of them proving conclusively that the woman with a pistol almost never misses her man. Why does the woman with the pistol so seldom miss her aim? It is absolutely one chance in a thousand that she fails to shoot true. Policemen the country over will tell you this. The frail, hysterical creature with the new pistol which she never dared touch before, so she will tell you, is far more dangerous than the best target shot or the most dangerous thug or highwayman that ever held up a passer-by.

“Cowboys and bad men of the west, brought up to use Colts and Remingtons as playthings, men who can shoot off the heads of rattlesnakes from their ponies, miss their men time and again. But a woman seems never to miss hers, afraid of the revolver as she is.

“Ever see a row in a cowboy saloon? The room is crowded with six-shooter experts. Somebody shoots and then everybody shoots. When fifty or sixty shots have been fired the guns are empty, the smoke clears away, the lamps are relighted and, probably nobody has been killed. Nearly all the shooters could hit a dime at 25 yards.

“Yet one angry, overwrought woman, who has never fired a pistol in her life, brings down the man she wants to kill every time.

“The average American man knows something about a revolver; but he can rarely hit anything with it. Nobody ever saw a policeman who could shoot straight further than at a three-foot range. Thugs and hold-up men know that time and again they get away in a fusillade of bullets which are just as apt to kill somebody across the street or in the next block as to bring down the intended targets. The Jesse James men with their pistols were no match for the sturdy farmers with their shotguns.

“You must be an expert to shoot straight with a revolver. It takes long practice and steady nerves. Why is it then, that a woman, who is all nerves, trembling with excitement and resentment, hits her mark every time? Alone and calm, were she practicing with a pistol, she would be as apt to shoot herself as hit the target. Yet when she is nerved to it she shoots straight every time…

“There is a curious psychology of pistol shooting, into which the condition of a woman, strung to a high nervous tension, and her unfamiliarity with the weapon fit perfectly. In an instant, and by instinct, she is on a par with the greatest marksmen of the age. Were she to try to repeat her performance against the biggest of targets at ten paces it would be safe to give any odds that she could not hit it at all.”

This article didn’t take into account the important fact that a woman who fires a gun at a man is usually being attacked by him. He’s in her immediate proximity. It would be difficult to miss. That’s different from men brawling in a saloon and firing their guns. But there is something to what he says. Most women look at a gun as a last resort. They have to be terrified to even consider using it. Men often brandish guns to keep danger at bay. They shoot to scare threats away without intending to hit them. Like Zig Ziglar said, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”

When I lived in North Carolina, I visited a gun range and had a conversation with a guy there about home invasions. “I’d bet on a woman with one of these,” he said, pointing to a .22 caliber revolver in a display case, “against a man with a .45 any day.” I laughed and he said, “I’m serious. Even in a panic, a man shoots once. A woman will empty her gun.”

Unless you’ve been confronted by a menacing stranger or a madman intending to kill you, you can’t know what you’d do. I have a friend who says she’d rather be killed than fire a gun at someone. I’ve got no desire to shoot anybody but in a situation faced with certain death, I’m sure I would fire—and I imagine fear and adrenaline would cause me to keep firing until all the bullets were gone, like the gun range guy said.

I protest the 1909 coverage though. I’m not on par with the greatest marksmen of the age but I was a decent shot and I could hit a target at more than ten paces, thank you very much.