Should wives, daughters and sisters be armed? YES!
Ask any NRA instructor and you will learn that women are typically better shots than men, when both start off in a beginner’s class together. So if you are looking at an NRA Basic Pistol course with 5 men and 5 women who have never shot before, bet on the women to do better at the range at the end of the class!
This is chiefly because women don’t come into the class with the “macho” attitude that we men have: that we ‘should’ know how to handle a gun because we are men. Women generally have fewer pre-conceived notions and listen more and develop their skills more quickly.
The worst thing that we men do to our sisters, wives and daughters is disempower them with the stereotypes of women as victims. In the movies, it doesn’t matter how slowly the monster walks, he always overtakes the weeping, terrified woman who keeps falling down as she tries to run to safety!
A woman who can confidently carry a firearm can stop running, turn around and shoot the monster! But even if there are no monsters, the woman who can handle a gun carries with her more confidence in her ability to protect herself.
About the most dangerous situation I can imagine a woman being in is walking out to her car in a dark parking lot where a van with a sliding door is parked next to her driver’s side door. Now in this particular situation, you wouldn’t want to walk out alone, lest you be grabbed and pulled into the van and kidnapped. However, the woman who has trained with a gun has likely also developed her situational awareness so that she would know what to do.
The best thing we can do to empower the women in our lives is to give them the gift of safety that comes with firearms training.