Women, Guns and Careers

(November 15, 2001) Of late there have been any number of stories in the media about more and more women choosing to be able to defend themselves and their families with a firearm. And I could not be happier (well, I could but that is a whiole different column). Since the mainstream media is covering that fairly well, I thought I would cover a different story about women and guns. A whole pile of success stories for women in the gun industry.

Recently, BrazTech, the US distributor for Rossi firearms named a new Sales Manager. Rossi has been coming back strong for the last couple of years and needed a solid, experienced firearms professional. So they picked Shari-Lynn Fix. A woman. And a woman that has been in the industry for ten years. A woman that has been in the firearms industry almost her entire working life. Shari will now direct national sales for one of the oldest and best known names in long guns.

This is wonderful news. As more and more women become involved in the shooting sports, more and more women become involved in the firearms industry. And that can only be a good thing.

There are a lot of women in serious management roles in the industry. Starting with Elizabeth Saunders, who owns American Derringer Corp, and including folks like Barbara Hayden, co-owner of Starline, supplying brass for reloaders. Then there is Lisa Des Camps who runs the Marketing and Advertising at Galco and Marnie McCausland at Thompson/Center. Stephanie Plumecocq able handles the marketing responsibilities at Glock, Inc. Phyllis Gould reports in every day to steer Gould & Goodrich.

In the publishing world, we have Peggy Tartaro who is the Editor of Women & Guns as well as Gila Hayes, Lyn Bates, Susan Laws and the rest of the staff of the magazine. Over at Combat Handguns, we have Shirley Steffen who is the publisher, and over at Shooting Industry Magazine, we have Anita Carson heading up the national sales and marketing effort for the industry's leading trade publication. At GunGames, Jocelyn Stott runs the production show for one of the slickest gun magazines published today. Until very recently, Cynthia Richard juggled the traffic and production for the NRA family of publications.

At Shooters Online, who host this site, I deal almost exclusively with women, including Carol LaPlante, previously of SIG and Maria Cote, who knows her way around the net like nobody else. The woman is a magician. And, one of the first folks to work at Shooters, and still there, managing the books - for a successful dot-com - is Shirley Harbour.

And the story...well, the story is that these are just the few that I could think of without resorting to my rolodex. Every year I attend the SHOT Show with the folks at Taurus. And every SHOT Show, more and more of the dealers coming around to look at the products and get information are women. Lots are partners with their husbands in a shop, and they are active. They are not back home minding the store. They are at the show, figuring out what to order and how many.

I started out with another column related to the attacks and the war, but pretty much everything that can be said has been said. Then I was going to write a nice Thanksgiving story, but I will be in Philadelphia for the holiday, away from my warm South Florida (Official Motto: "We Did So Vote for Bush!") and therefore cold. And then I thought about meeting Shari and how much knowledge she had about firearms, and that made me think of Elizabeth and there it is. I figured it might be nice to recognize these women and their accomplishments in the industry.

And one last person. At the end of the year, Shari LeGate will be stepping down from her leadership role in the Women's Shooting Sports Foundation. Appropriately, Shari was named Industry Person of the Year by the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence this year for her contributions to the sport through her work at the foundation. Through her efforts, thousands of women were introduced to the shooting sports. She will be missed.

So, thanks to all of these women and the many more for their labors and efforts and inspiration. As I said, I could not be happier.

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