Once was no but now is yes: A text exchange

A couple months ago I took a girl, one who hated guns with a passion, shooting at my range. Just to be totally clear, she didn't just hate guns but those of us who have them also; She was a bit of a ranter to be honest, yeah one of those. Basically she was a strong anti-gun advocate and felt that everyone who had guns was a terrible person and that it was her mission to tell them so.

To her credit she accepted my invitation to come to my range and have a shoot - I was amazed, but held true to my word I took her, supplied rifles, a shotgun and some handguns for her to shoot, all the ammunition too. It was an expensive day for me, but a good one. She ended up enjoying herself and after speaking with a few people decided that it was time well spent; But she went away saying guns are not for her despite having a good time and being pretty good at shooting...Ok girlie, challenge accepted.

You can see the original post here. As a follow-up she called a little later and asked to go again, to the range, and I acquiesced to her request figuring she was starting to like shooting. That was a few weeks ago now and only last night she sent me a text message. You'll note her name is different as I called her Sophie in my post, clearly it's not Sophie at all, it's Mikayla. Take a look below at the conversation we had.

The texts

This is not what I had expected, Mikayla wanting to get her license and own firearms. I actually thought she was joking hence the laughter. Like, yip good joke Mikayla, now what do you really want? I'm not sure she appreciated the laughter much though.

Just to be clear I can be persuasive however did nothing other than show her how to safely operate firearms, the basics on how to shoot and demonstrate that the sport can be safe and responsible - The firearms themselves are safe. She left the range that day feeling a lot more comfortable about the whole thing and so yeah, I guess I had some influence, but I did no persuading...She came to her decision all alone.

I'll give her points for pegging me as an idiot though...She's right, I can be, but not when it comes to firearms and representing them and their owners with intelligence, responsibility and respect - Especially to people who hate them in the first place.

The plan is to bring her some forms, the application for my range which is a military-run range that, if positions are available, will accept non-military people. She'll have to pay the membership fee then when she has a member number fill in the form at a police station to apply for the A, B and H license she is looking for, the same categories I have.

Category A is: Air guns, paint-ball firearms, rim-fire rifles and shotguns. Category B is: Muzzle loading firearms, revolver-rifles, centre-fire rifles, multiple-barrel centre-fire and Category H is: All handguns. There's others but they're not relevant here.

The process of getting a firearms license in my State of Australia is reasonably lengthy. For a simple rifle license I've seen it take as long a nine months or so and with handguns up to twelve months. I suppose they draw it out with the hope that the applicant loses patience and withdraws the application.

Once Mikayla has her range membership she'll complete the forms at the police station then the checks begin; There's a raft of reasons she could be denied like assault and violent crime convictions, restraining orders, previous firearms offences and so on although she'll be fine in that regard unless she has a secret past I'm not aware of.

Once the approval comes through from the police firearms branch she can begin her training at the range with our trainers; Safety and holster accreditation is covered plus some basic shooting skills and when signed off she can take that paper to the police for processing. Once processed and paid for she will have her license issued.

From there she can buy as many non-restricted rifles or shotguns as she likes plus only one handgun (in any calibre) in the first six months of being licensed. Of course, all firearms must be stored in accordance with the law; This is enforced and policed through intrusive spot-checks. These are the things we'll discuss on Friday and knowing her she'll have a notebook full of notes by the end of it all. I better be prepared I guess huh?

I'm really pretty happy with this result; It's not about having another shooter per se, more about having shown a non-believer that firearms can be safe and owners responsible. She'd not be putting her hand up to become one if she thought otherwise. It's a good result for me, a guy who works to represent firearms and their owners with responsibility and intelligence.