Pop Quiz!

Check out this AP article on women and the shooting sports, which is pretty good, then take our quiz. There are two interesting statistics in this article you'll need to pay close attention to. Here's statistic #1:

While 13 million people nationwide hunted in 2001 -- the most recent year for which data is available -- females accounted for only 9 percent of the total, or 1.2 million, according to a report by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Nationally, about 12 percent of all males hunt, while only about 1 percent of women do.

Okey-dokey. Now here's statistical tidbit #2:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry's trade association, says about 24 percent -- or 4.7 million -- of the nation's 19.8 million target shooters in 2003 were female, according to American Sports Data.

HMMMMMM...13 million hunters; almost 20 million sport shooters. So here's the pop quiz...do we as an industry:

1) Put all our money, programs and energies into hunter recruitment and retention programs and see if we can slow the inevitable.
2) Try to DOUBLE the number of sport shooters while Republicans rule the roost to make us (and the Second Amendment) virtually untouchable in future years.

If you answered #1, CONGRATULATIONS! You're perfectly suited to step up and lead in the firearms industry! That's right — you get a secretary, a natty title, a couple of assisants and all the grant money you can burn through. If you answered #2, you pathetic loser! Go back to golf!

Here's the second part of our quiz. We all agree that an increased number of women in the overall shooting sports is a good thing, because the more women who are involved in the overall shooting sports, the harder it is for our enemies to "sell" women on their lies.

Given that substantially more women participate in the shooting sports than hunting; that the barriers to entry into the shooting sports are much lower than the barriers for entry into hunting, and that opportunities for the shooting sports are available in virtually every urban and rural area of the United States, while opportunities for hunting are much harder to source, where do you think we should place all our money, energies and efforts in recruiting women?

1) Hunting
2) Shooting sports

If you answered #1, you not only get to keep your executive position, but you get a raise — and lots more of that yummy grant money! If you answered #2, what's wrong with you? Forget golf! You're banished to bowling! You can't see the forest for the blaze orange trees! It's simple math-um-matics...let's say it cost, oh, $100 to recruit a woman to attend and participate in a shooting sport event, and it cost $1000 to recruit a woman to the hunting fields. It's easy to see that the $1000 is better spent recruiting one woman to try hunting rather than 10 women to try trap and skeet.

Understand?