The Niles Star

Girls with guns: Conservation club drawing more women than ever to pistol training

Babes with Bullets instructor Sheila Hoekstra shows a student how to aim a 9-millimeter at Bend of the River Conservation Club in Niles. (Daily Star photo/AARON MUELLER)

By AARON MUELLER

Niles Daily Star

The daughter of a gunsmith, Kay Miculek has been around firearms for her entire life. And after spending much of her adulthood around those who share her passion as a professional competitive shooter, she is now spending much of her time around women who have never touched a gun.

Miculek, a Louisiana resident, is part of a growing movement of training new female firearm fanatics. She is the head instructor and founder of Babes with Bullets, a pistol training camp for women held in locations across the country.

The camp is currently under way at Bend of the River Conservation Club in Niles and will continue until Friday.

In a 2009 study by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Soutwick Associates, 70 percent of gun shop owners reported an increase in female buyers.

Miculek agrees there has been a significant increase in interest in owning and handling guns among women.

“I’ve been doing this (shooting competitively) for 20 years, and we’ve got more women shooting right now than I’ve ever seen. More younger women too, which is good,” she said.

Miculek, a 10-time United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) National Women’s Open champ and twice a member of the International Practical Shooting Confederation World Shoot championship team, said the focus of the camp is to expand the sport but admits the reasons women attend vary.

“We love the sport. We want to introduce more women to the sport,” she said. “We advertise it as a sport, but probably half of the women that show up have some degree of desire for self defense. They want to learn how to safely handle a gun in case they need it for self defense.”

Miculek and her teaching staff, which also includes nine-time USPSA National Women’s Limited Champion Lisa Munson, were training more than 20 area women how to operate 9-millimeter pistols at Bend of the River Wednesday. Many of the camp’s participants had never handled a gun before.

“We get a lot of women that come to the camp to overcome a fear of guns, and they have developed that fear mostly through ignorance. Most of them have never touched a gun,” Miculek said. “Anytime you overcome a fear, you go away a stronger person. It can carry over to other things.”

The clinic at Bend of the River is one of 10 Miculek will run at locations across the country.

“We keep growing,” she said. “I love watching the new ones come up.”

For more information about the Babes with Bullets clinic, visit www.babeswithbullets.com.

This weekend, Bend of the River will host the 23rd annual Michiana Territorial Championship, an official USPSA shooting competition. For more information on the event, visit www.borcc.org.