The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental human right. Over the years, though, it’s often been thought of as a very masculine thing. Guys love their guns, trucks, and college football down here in the South, after all.

Women? Well, women have other interests.

But that’s not necessarily the case anymore. While most homicides are men, a lot of those homicides are people engaged in criminal activity. They’re being killed in either self-defense or by other criminals for various bad-guy reasons. Women, however, are tempting targets for a lot of criminals. Since, on average, women are physically weaker than their attackers, they’re at a severe disadvantage if that happens.

However, guns even those odds.

Gun rights for both men and women are under assault in this country. Anti-gunners are still focused on guns being a masculine problem, which means women descending on D.C. to talk about gun rights is a great move for the Second Amendment and all gun owners.

The initiative, known as The DC Project, is a nonpartisan, grassroots movement that organizes women to share with lawmakers why they choose to own and carry firearms. Ages ranged from 11 to 76, and included students, moms, competitive shooters, and victims of assault.

After several days packed with meetings, the week culminated with a rally on the West Capitol Lawn on Friday where speakers shared testimonies and discussed the rising demographic of female gun ownership.

The DC Project Indiana Delegate Beth Walker, a 17-year-old student and competitive shooter, spoke about how severe concussions prevented her from participating in traditional sports. Competitive shooting provided a non-contact, detail-oriented sport for her to participate in.

Another woman named Shana, spoke about the night she was raped on her college campus, and how she decided she would never be a defenseless victim again. After her attack, she went with a friend to shoot for the first time.

“I fired her GLOCK 17, and in the moment I fired it, I knew if I had that gun on that life-altering night, I would not have been raped,” she said.

Women, like men, approach shooting from a variety of avenues. Some, like Walker, are interested in competitive shooting. Others, like Shana, are the victims of violent crimes who refuse to allow themselves to go through that again.

However, when anti-gun lawmakers are also talking about women’s rights or how they’re all pro-women, let’s not forget that women need to defend themselves. The Leftist idea of “teach men not to rape,” something that’s become extremely popular in some circles, ignores the fact that these men aren’t committing a horrible violent crime out of ignorance. They know it’s wrong; they just don’t care.

What they will care about are their lives. Even sociopaths have a sense of self-preservation, after all.

Will these women change minds? Probably not, but that’s because the entrenched mind can’t be changed. What I think they can do, however, is force the conversation to change in such a way that anti-gun lawmakers can no longer pretend their gun control proposals are pro-woman proposals.