Women continue to make up the fastest-growing market in the firearms industry. From firearms, gun range memberships, concealed carry gear and firearms training, the fairer sex is armed and independent.

“Women are increasingly taking their protection into their own hands,” said NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen. “They don’t want to rely on a boyfriend or a spouse or the government.”

Last weekend, a pair of women from Connecticut made their way to Washington, D.C. with The D.C. Project to lobby U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, one of the country’s most vicious advocates of gun control.

“We are not the stereotype people think of when they think about shooting sports and gun defense,” said Holly Sullivan Sanady, an NRA-certified firearms instructor and mother of one from Southbury.

“We have very different struggles than men realize,” she said before meeting Murphy. “So for women who want to have the power not to be victims, there is nothing like (gun ownership).”

“My hope is that we can start focusing more on the common ground and less on the divisiveness,” said Brooke Cheney, a competitive shooter from Harwinton who was encouraged by their conversation with Senator Murphy. “The hard work of community-building that needs to be done is not going to happen with the swipe of a pen.”

Murphy, who is one of the most outspoken advocates of gun control, left the meeting sounding like the women had gotten through to him.

“Sometimes proponents of stronger gun-control legislation get cast as opponents of the Second Amendment, but what I am proposing would never take away the right of somebody buy a gun for protection,” said Murphy after the meeting.

“We started out with a lot more in common with these two women from Connecticut than political pundits give us credit for,” Murphy said of Sanady and Cheney. “These women take gun ownership seriously and they represent responsible gun owners that often are not represented at the center of the debate.”

However, Murphy was back to his old tricks in no time flat, saying, “The stories of individuals who have used a gun to repel an attacker are compelling, but they are rare compared to the instances of guns in a home that are used to kill the owner of the gun.”

On July 12, 2016, Murphy took to the Senate floor to respond to the “the biggest lie used by the gun lobby in this debate”:

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

This isn’t true. It has never been true. It will never be true. It is quite simply an invention designed by the gun industry to sell more guns, to convince Americans that laws and rules cannot protect them. That the only thing that can keep them safe from being shot is to buy expensive weapons and expensive ammunition that pad the profits of the big gun companies. So it’s time that we call this lie what it is. It’s a marketing gimmick for gun companies, plain and simple.