Gun Safety Advocates Continually Surprised by the Diversity of Modern Gun Owners

Marchelle Tigner Davis black women gun range training
Courtesy Marchelle Davis

“No one should have to choose between groceries and getting responsible at home with firearms,” founder Blake Alvarenga told News 3 Now in the shadow of the Capitol building.

Most Saturday mornings between April and November, you’ll find Alvarenga here passing out free gun locks at the farmer’s market. It’s because he knows safe gun ownership isn’t always cheap or comfortable to achieve, but it’s essential.

“I want to make sure people get educated, because if people don’t get educated, it doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t get a gun,” Alvarenga said.

That mission doesn’t end with free gun locks. Alvarenga also teaches free gun safety classes specifically geared toward people who may not feel comfortable in other gun-heavy environments.

“It’s all the people you don’t expect to see at the gun store coming to my class because this provides them an opportunity to have inclusive education where they don’t feel any pressure to know anything or do anything with this knowledge,” Alvarenga said.

He started the classes to fill what he saw as a gap in the firearm education landscape.

“A lot of the people that were coming to me asking about firearm education didn’t feel comfortable with options available to them, whether it was because it was at a gun range or with an instructor from a certain kind of organization with certain political leanings, or because the instructor couldn’t relate to them or understand where they were coming from.”

— Braden Ross in ‘It’s all the people you don’t expect to see’: Madison nonprofit offers free, inclusive gun safety classes

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12 thoughts on “Gun Safety Advocates Continually Surprised by the Diversity of Modern Gun Owners”

  1. From the article:
    “I’m a [gae]* man,” Wilson said. “I wouldn’t really want to just wander into a gun range without being sure exactly what type of organization it was.”

    Why? Who cares about what he does outside of the range? Is he going to be making out with another dude between shots? Is he going to be flitting around like a little girl? Does he introduce himself to everyone as a gae* man? Brainwashed gae* progressives need to get over themselves. They aren’t as special as they think they are. No one cares.

    *avoiding moderation

    1. Because the totality of the leftist media apparatus hammers their audience 24/7 with fanciful tales of pickup trucks packed with swastika clad hillbillies dragging anyone literate behind them down dirt roads to nowhere.

      Who can blame them? Obviously there are more Nazis here than were in Germany during WWII. Obviously tens of millions of white people feed off the blood of minority of every stripe.

      It’s amazing any of them steel the resolve to leave their homes what with the very real and persistent threat of the everyday lynching.

      1. While perhaps true (I won’t contest the charge because it isn’t germane to the point), we do well to remember that correlation is not causation. Having a preference towards partners with the same chromosome pair is quite different than having a preference for partners too young to legally vote. There may be some small center circle on a Venn diagram, but you would find that same overlap if you did that diagram among folks of different professions, different ages, different zip codes, you name it. For those in the Gun Culture (to use the phrase) we’re just a bunch of folks sharing a hobby, or perhaps our favorite sport, and like most folks we’re pleased that somebody else shares the interest and want to be as helpful as we can and don’t really care all that much if your assembly instructions only have tabs or slots in them. For instructors, particularly the NRA-certified, I believe this is covered under the rule about attitude being the most important thing an instructor brings to bear, and the most important part of safe gun handling. Unless it is causing a safety issue or disruptive to the classroom, it’s not a problem. Speaking personally, as a NRA-certified instructor in a few categories, it is incumbent upon me to represent the standards and professionalism of NRA-certified instructors in my role and provide the class to any who hire me for it who are not disqualified by felony conviction or similar. My response to Mister Alvarenga above is that he speaks of educating people, but by only handing out locks it’s sort of akin to teaching people to lock their cars but not how to drive. Proper education should include how to safely use, care for, store, and be proficient with that firearm, which an NRA Basic Rifle|Pistol|Shotgun course will cover. I’d be happy to teach that course for free to anybody willing, as I’m sure most instructors will, but I do have some family reservations about spending the rent money on instruction materials and renting a facility and insurance and all that other stuff to give the NRA course. If he can get the sponsors to chip in for those items, maybe a lunch of hot dogs and a salad from a local food truck or we do this at a church and use their kitchen, he’ll go a long way towards making people truly safe and competent around firearms. Purely as an idea, there are Boy Scout and 4H camps across the nation with certified ranges, as well as facilities for classrooms. I suspect they would be more than happy to rent them for a reasonable cost for such an endeavor.

  2. I was raised around guns. My mom and dad were avid gun owners and expert shooters. When I was a kid, my Mom ran some free training courses teaching women how to use and shoot guns. I would help out.

    Back then where we lived, if you were not white it was almost impossible to get a gun because there was still a old law on the books that said it was illegal to sell a gun, basically, to someone who wasn’t white… and it was illegal to sell a gun to a black or Hispanic person, although portions of the law about these possessing guns had already been repealed and this one was in the process of being repealed but it had not happened yet. The county sheriff enforced it too even though outside the county no one paid any attention to it but it was still on the books, the sheriff was full of his version of his own self-created ‘authority’ and he loved to focus it on black and Hispanic people. The sheriff wasn’t really liked by many people, even white people in the area didn’t like him, but he had his crony supporters and kept getting re-elected.

    So anyway, my Mom ran this course. She would provide the guns if the ladies didn’t have them and when the course was over they could choose to buy the gun they used. My mom had a deal with a local gun store, really a hardware store with a gun shop area, to supply the guns on loan (they were used guns but in great shape) and if someone bought the gun after the course was over the gun would be sold to them, really by the gun store and not my mom.

    It was white women taking the course and Black or Hispanic women had never shown up to ask about the course, until one day this black lady showed up to inquire about the course. Mom told her, basically, while describing the course ‘sure, I’ll put you in a class I have starting tomorrow morning’. So tomorrow morning comes, the white ladies showed up and along comes that black lady but shes got a few others with her black and Hispanic. Mom tells her, sure, they are welcome too. The white ladies didn’t say a word, nor even care they were black and Hispanic and everyone got along. So the class starts, progressing nicely, a little break and its time to go outside to the range area to put to use the lessons of basics section they had just learned in class. I show up to watch and help out. After a practice round, they are doing pretty good and everyone is putting all the shots in the 10 inch circle 10 yards away.

    So here are these ladies on the firing line with loaded handguns, and up rolls the sheriff and some deputies. A patrol going by had seen this group of black and Hispanic ladies arrive.

    So the sheriff tells my mom she can’t have these black and Hispanic women in her classes, and even threatens to arrest her if she doesn’t stop it. My mom refuses, and basically tells him to kiss her a** and leave and stands strong and defiant. Then he threatens to arrest the black and Hispanic ladies and he and his deputies start moving forward. Anyway, at this point suddenly the sheriff and deputies realize the position they are in and freeze …. here are a dozen women, collectively white and black and Hispanic, armed with guns suddenly giving him a “I dare you’ ‘warning danger’ look and stance that would probably make even the most hardcore combat veteran worried. I remember actually sensing the danger and hatred exuded from those women against this racist sheriff and his deputies.

    The sheriff backed down, and he and his deputies left.

    The class continues after a short break. Class over, then my mom had to tell them it wasn’t a good idea for her to sell them the gun they had used for the class just in case the sheriff wanted to act a fool again but something was being worked out for them and made a phone call. The gun shop owner showed up and the white ladies purchased the guns … gun shop owner leaves and the white ladies gifted them to the black and Hispanic ladies. See, the law said ya could not sell them a gun, but did not say they could not be gifted or loaned or posses a gun and it was legal back then to give a gun to someone else even if you had just purchased it and it wasn’t what we call today a ‘straw purchase’.

    A few of those women went on to need those guns to save their lives later in life. One, had to defend herself against the very sheriff (by then retired) who had threatened to arrest her with the others that day in the past when he broke into her home and tried to rape then kill her.

    Years have gone by, mom and dad have passed on since. Those laws were finally completely repealed, that sheriff long since dead (and deserved it too), things changed, I still remember the danger and hatred exuded from those women, I’ll never forget how my Mom looked that day standing up to the sheriff.

    1. Right Wing Nutter

      That is a wonderful story. Based on a situation that my wife happened across a few decades ago, I’m pretty sure she would have reacted like one of those ladies. I agree that women especially should be armed and well trained with their weapons.

  3. But… but… isn’t the Second Amendment specific to white people? Are minorities even allowed to have civil rights? All the smart people tell me that if black and brown people buy guns, we white people will end the 2A immediately! The always smart ladies on The View have assured me of that fact!

    I’d like to ask Colion Noir, or maybe LtCol Allen West about that.

  4. Well, these are largely the same people who are also surprised when the fax machine spits out their original, rather than transporting it physically through the phone line.