The Well Armed Woman is a national organization dedicated to educating and empowering women through firearms education. The local chapter in Westfield recently had a public discussion on active shooters and will soon have a presentation and discussion about opioids.
The Reporter had the opportunity to talk to Ann Stapleton from the Westfield chapter about the organization in general as well as these two event public events.
“The originator and president of The Well Armed Woman is Carrie Lightfoot,” Stapleton said. “The headquarters are in Arizona. She started out with local chapters in her area and there was an overwhelming interest from women wanting to know more about shooting. That’s always been a typically male subject, but so many women are much more liberated today than they used to be. They really want to know more about how to protect themselves.”
The organization has had an enormous response from the public, with chapters in 45 states, according to their website: TheWellArmedWoman.com. They educate women who want to know more about firearm safety and protection, regardless of their level of experience.
“I would say the majority of women that come to us don’t know a doggone thing about guns,” Stapleton told The Reporter. “They want to be educated. We educated them and empower them. I think once the woman has the handgun or rifle she chooses to shoot with and has the education behind it, they feel very empowered to take care of themselves and protect themselves better. That’s our primary goal: to educate and empower women.”
The organization and the monthly meeting is exclusively for women. They do, however, offer some educational events that are open to the public. One such event was a presentation and discussion on active shooters led by Bill Clifford.
On Sept. 18, Clifford spoke to approximately 40 members of the community at the Westfield Fire Department, 17535 Dartown Road, about how to deal with an active shooter situation.
“I think it’s important for people to be aware of situations that could arise and to forearm themselves with knowledge,” Stapleton said about the event. “When those situations arise, you don’t want to be caught up short, not knowing what to do. We were talking about being aware of your environment and possible hazards. Should a situation arise, we talked about how to react: whether we should stay and try to fight those situations, if should we get out of those situations or how we could lessen the danger of the situation.”
The evening was not just a presentation of information by Clifford, but was also an opportunity for questions and discussion by those in attendance.
According to Stapleton, “We went through various exercises of ‘what would you do if an active shooter came into this room?’ Would you try to get out? Would you look for a place to hide? Would you look for something to defend yourself? It was all pretty stimulating and we had a lot of discussion and questions about it.”
Stapleton was the organizer of this event, having previously seen a similar presentation.
“I met Bill [at another venue] when he gave the same talk to the group I was with,” Stapleton said. “I asked him if he would be willing to come talk to The Well Armed Woman and he agreed. We opened that up to the community in general. We had quite a few visitors there, in addition to our members.”
The next public event will be Tuesday, Oct. 17, when James Ginder from the Hamilton County Health Department will give a lecture on opioids.
“This is a hot topic,” Stapleton told The Reporter. “When we talk about home invasions we have to understand most home invasions aren’t like it was when someone broke into your house to maybe steal a TV set. Now they break in because they need cash for drugs. Often, we are confronted by an assailant who is on drugs. That’s an entirely different situation. I thought that would be a very pertinent subject, although people might not see the correlation initially, I think if you heard the talk, you would understand that this is something we run into in every facet of our lives.”
This talk will be from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Westfield Fire Station, located at 17535 Dartown Road. The talk is free and open to the public.
For women interested in learning more about The Well Armed Woman, there are regular meetings in Westfield.
“We have meeting the third Thursday of every month,” Stapleton said. “We meet at Tim’s Shooting Academy of Westfield [17777 Commerce Drive] from 7 to 9 p.m. We do approximately an hour of classroom and an hour of shooting time.”
Neither registration nor membership in the national organization is required to attend a meeting.
“They can just show up,” Stapleton told The Reporter. “We’ll take care of you. If you don’t have a gun, that’s no problem. Several of our ladies will come to our meetings for the education part, but do not stay to shoot, and that’s fine. If they are new to shooting they may want to stay with us for the meeting because we have an instructor when they go out to shoot.”
The organization’s website, TheWellArmedWoman.com, has educational video, information on how to be a member and the purpose of our organization. There is also a link called “Local Chapters” where you can look for the closest chapter in any state.