(MOBILE, Ala.) May 8, 2008--Fuscia fingernails, stiletto heels and cold, hard steel: It's not an advertisement or an action movie; it's real life
These days, more women are chosing to fire back at crime. Eighty-two year old Ethel Sanders is one of them. "They think cause I'm on this stick and cant get around too good they can come in and do what they want to do to me," she says, "so I have to have something."
She sleeps next to guardian angels, but when she woke one morning to someone breaking in, it was another protector she reached for. Now, on top of burglary charges 25 year old James Penn has a gunshot wound to deal with.
"That was just luck of the draw. I'm not proud of, cause I didn't want to shoot nobody," she says. Neither does Emily Harkey.
She says a series of rapes and robberies near her college campus brought her and a group friends to the firing range. "I'm sweet to a point," she giggles, "but if I need to defend myself, then it's going to happen."
And it's happening more and more often. For generations it's been cowBOYS. badGUYS, gunMEN, but these days, the sex of shooters is changing.
Already this year, more than six thousand women have applied for pistol permits in Mobile County. The number of ladies with liscences is just fifteen hundred shooters shy of last years total.
Emily will soon have one of them. "Since I don't know any martial arts," she tells NBC 15, "it's something I need."
Carrie Sandefur helps run the gun safety class Emily and her pals are taking at Steve's Gun Shop. She says she's happy more girls feel at home on the range.
She's been a gun owner for years and says, she can't blame them. "I carry a gun for protection," she says as she shows NBC 15 the pistol she has beneath her shirt, "I've never had to use it never threatened to use it, but it's a comfort to me."
Ethel Sanders says it's a confort to her, too. "I keep it on my bedside table cause I can just look for people to bother me," she says. She sleeps easier, though, knowing her safety is in her own hands.
