Chicago women take to guns to fight violence
By middle of July, 1,557 shootings, 369 murders took place in the city
Chicago, July 23: Her hands slowed by rheumatoid arthritis, 71-year-old Marietta Crowder stands in front of her paper target, steadies her gun and pulls the trigger. Shots are fired in quick succession.
Crowder is perhaps not the typical patron of a gun club.
But she is one of seven women learning to safely handle firearms at a shooting range in a suburb of Chicago, a city wracked by gun violence and a soaring murder rate.
“My husband influenced me and we thought about it a long time. Maybe you need a gun these days, in your house at least,” said Crowder, who lives in a gated community with her retired banker husband.
A fellow retiree, Javondlynn Dunagan, came up with the idea of gun training classes geared toward women, and for the “Ladies of Steel” gun club — after successful training, the women gather twice a month to practice their skills.
Dunagan served as a parole officer for 25 years before finishing her career in January, but had rarely held a gun when dealing with convicts.
She said that she started carrying one after divorcing her police officer husband.
“I was at home by myself with my daughter, and I was used to having a firearm in a home with my ex-husband,” she explained. “So, I wanted to make sure that we were safe.”
But Dunagan noticed something curious when she visited gun ranges around Chicago to practice.
“I noticed that I never saw two women at the range together or a group of ladies,” she recounted.
Dunagan was particularly struck by the lack of African-American women like herself interested in learning how to use firearms.
“I started asking friends and they said, ‘Yeah, I’m scared of guns.’”
That answer prompted her to start JMD Defense & Investigations, offering gun training programmes geared towards women. The “investigations” side of the business will debut next year.