Lately, I’ve come to notice a common – and rather annoying – trend that takes place in the gun industry. It’s something that should be addressed and not put by the wayside any longer.

Guys, we love you. We respect you. We value your opinions. And we trust your experiences. But please, for the love of God, will you let us choose what guns we want to own and shoot? Will you take a step back and let us have a say in what’s right for us?

The other day I was at a store, browsing the gun store counter, trying to get an idea of what was in stock. I look to my right and see a couple, probably in their 50s, looking in the gun case. I overheard the husband talking to the man behind-the-counter about a Ruger LCP.

“I just want something I can put in my pocket,” the husband said. “My 9MM is too heavy to carry.”

I rolled my eyes and watched as he attempted to fit the small gun in his hand. Way. Too. Small.

“That’s pretty nice,” he said and handed it to his wife.

His wife picked up the gun and put it in his hands. She shuffled it around, clearly unsure of how to hold the firearm but she didn’t say anything, just handed it back to him.

“Would this fit in my pocket? Do you mind if I try it?” the husband asked.

I sighed and thought of all of the horrible internet memes.

He put it in his pocket and pulled it back out.

“That’s a pretty small gun,” I said rather nonchalantly. In other words, it wasn’t the right fit for either one of them.

“Eh. It’s not like we’re going to take it to the range or anything,” he replied.

“What good is having a gun then if you don’t take it to the range and practice with it?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t plan on having to shoot it but it does have 6 to 8 rounds,” came his response.

A puzzled look must have come over my face and he quickly snapped into defensive mode when I asked, “You may have that many rounds but what good is that if you don’t know how to properly shoot the gun?”

When everything was said and done, they each ended up getting an LCP.

Now here’s where my annoyance comes in.

I get tired of going into gun stores and sales clerks automatically assume I want a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield, a .38 snubbie or a something like an LCP.

NEWSFLASH: there are more than three guns out there. And guess what? Not all of us like those guns. Those guns are not the end all be all for every woman.

Not all of us want a tiny pistol with a big kick. Not all of us want to shove our guns in our purses and never pull it out again. We should all want to be proficient. We need to know how to use our firearms, even though we hope to never have to. We want to be self-sufficient in our personal protection plan… and you need to let us be.

I’ve found that my H&K USP Compact is a great fit for me. It’s heavier, meaning less recoil but it’s also concealable. My hands fit properly around the grip and I’m confident enough to fire it if a self-defense scenario presented itself.

It’s important for you to let your girlfriends, wives, sisters and any other woman in your life to pick out their own gun. Don’t push them to one brand or one model. Let them experiment. Encourage them to rent firearms from a local range so they can shoot them before purchasing them. After all, having a gun that’s tucked away and never shot is essentially useless.

Also, please stop assuming that if you Cerakote something in pink or purple that it becomes magically made for women. There are more colors in the rainbow. And *gasp* some of us may actually care more about a firearm’s functionality than its color. Shocking, right?

So guys, it’s okay to trust your woman to decide what’s right for her. It’s okay to let her pick something out that you may not like or want to shoot as long as she’s comfortable and confident enough to use it for self-defense.

At the end of the day, female gun owners want to be respected. And it starts by letting us decide what we want and how we want it.