A Girl & A Gun® is the largest all-women’s shooting organization with over 30,000 members. President & CEO Robyn Sandoval talked about her journey and the organization during our April interview.
While attending the 2026 National Rifle Association Annual Meeting, Sandoval stopped by to discuss A Girl & A Gun. This interview was made possible by Beretta Holding, the sponsor of the Voices of the Second Amendment at the NRAAM.
Sandoval says she’s just “another gun girl, another woman on the range,” but in reality this mother of three is one of the most accomplished and influential females in the firearms industry. For Sandoval, it wasn’t always all about guns. During our interview, she explains that she used to be vehemently anti gun but then had an awakening.
While Sandoval says she grew up in Texas, her family is transplants from California. She did not grow up in a gun-owning household. “Actually, I was vocally anti gun for most of my life,” she said. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Sandoval had a dose of reality while watching the aftermath play out on the news.
“When I saw a modern American city debilitated, and everyone was just devastated, thinking, how can this happen? We are not in a third-world country. We are in America. How can this be this way? And you realize how vulnerable our infrastructure is,” Sandoval recounted. “I saw this mother at the Superdome that had small children with her, and she handed her children to strangers getting on a bus to Houston, and she said, ‘Please take them. I'll try to find you in a few days.’ And I couldn't imagine being that desperate.”
Sandoval committed to a plan to not allow that to happen to her and her family. She thought to herself: What do I have to do so that’s never me? Sandoval decided she was going to start storing shelf-stable food like peanut butter and canned tuna. Should there be some sort of an event, she said they’d just “hunker down.”
“And my husband said, ‘If someone breaks in our door to take what we've saved, how am I gonna stop them?’” Sandoval said. “And after arguing for gun control my whole life, I had no argument, and it came down to: Okay, I will learn how to use a gun, how to not be afraid of it. I will let a gun in my home, which was a huge step with three kids. I didn't even want in our house.”
From those early near-prepper days to present day, Sandoval has taken quite a journey. Sandoval has found her own experiences to be useful in helping other women. Since she, herself, has gone from straight up anti gun to one of the preeminent voices on the Second Amendment and firearms training professionals in the country, her experience has covered a lot of ground.
“It's really awesome, because I'm able to talk to women at whatever phase of that journey they're in and understand where they are and help them see where there is fun and empowerment and confidence and everything on the other side,” Sandoval said.
“I have the best job in the world,” she said. “I get to watch women just thrive on the range, learning how to shoot from that brand new shooter. Help her find her first gun, help her be successful with it all the way up to our pro shooters.”
Being from the Lone Star State, people would think that it’s the Wild West and everyone is gun totin’. That’s not necessarily the case. While there are plenty who embrace their Second Amendment right in Texas, Sandoval notes it’s not quite like what we see in the movies.
“I live in Austin, so I'm the blue dot in the middle of what normally is a red state, but it is increasingly purple, as we have so many transplants coming from California and historically, Texas was always the stereotype,” Sandoval explained. “We think of Pee-wee Herman at the Alamo. It always had this kind of cowboy mentality, but that really wasn't the way for Texas (and) guns.”
Sandoval said that it’s only been recently that Texas has gotten over some issue like lowering the costs for getting a permit. Further, the state became a permitless carry state not too long ago. Other obstacles include required training.
“People have always thought that Texas was this big gun culture, and really our laws have always proven that wasn't really the case,” Sandoval said. “It's just a stereotype from the movies from the old John Wayne days that people have that thought about Texas. And I'm glad to see that we finally are getting more of those freedoms.”
Other issues that Texans have to deal with as far as the exercise of their Second Amendment right includes abiding by applicable signage. There are signs denoting so-called sensitive locations people need to be mindful of. And, there are laws regulating what kind of dining establishments carriers may enter while being in possession of a firearm.
The big thing that Sandoval was excited to talk about was their annual National Conference. While the 2026 conference has already come and gone, the dates and location of the 2027 conference have been announced. April 27 — May 2, 2027 in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Sandoval says at their conferences they really cover so many different disciplines and activities. “We do shooting from the ground, shooting the helicopter, pistols, rifle, shotguns,” she said. “We do everything. Defense. Competition. Literally, if you think it we have it. Archery, ground fighting, knife fighting, knife maintenance, like everything across the gamut. That's always a lot of fun. We'll have 700 students out there for that.”
This year was “the year of the rifle” and the organization aimed to bring more women into rifle shooting.
It was great catching up with Robyn Sandoval in Houston. Before parting, I asked her what she’d like to let readers and members of my audience know. “if (you’re) a woman, or have a woman in (your) life that loves to train and loves to hang out with awesome women, then go to AGirlAndAGun.org and find a chapter near you.”
For those of you who are joining me and Cam at this year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference and Alternative Mass Media Conference, Robyn will be presenting at AMM-Con. So, if you’re in the Dallas area, sign up and come on by. Her presentation is “Stop Chasing Traffic, Become the Source.”
If you’d like to catch the full interview with Robyn Sandoval, you can check that out HERE or in the embed below.
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