HAMILTON - Kathy Love of Hamilton and founder of Love2Shoot, a firearm training class that is geared toward helping women has made an impact through the last five to six years.
“Love2Shoot was started about five to six years ago. That was started by a need that I saw for female firearms instructors to be able to relate to women in particular. We were shooting, competitive shooting at the time, and we had some women who were coming up to our practices and they were feeling a little bit intimidated by the men there even though the men are great, but they were feeling a little intimidated. So light bulb moment, I decided hey this would be a need that needs to be filled,” Love said.
Kathy — who is certified through the NRA and the United States Concealed Carry Association — says she's had between 600 to 700 students since starting about five years ago, most of them women.
“I have dedicated women-only classes but I teach men as well. Unless it’s a women-only class I don’t limit it. But traditionally I have more women in my class than men. I do a lot of private one on one instruction which helps women because they are often times intimidated to go to their first class,” Love said.
Kathy says that the idea is not to use the firearm, it’s for self-defense.
“With that notion of self-defense that is your last resort is to use that gun and we want to train people that way. We want them to have the skills if they need them but in the hopes that they never ever has to use them,” Love said.
Kathy explained the difference between a male instructor teaching women and a female instructor teaching women.
"Just speaking the same language, I think we all know that women speak women and men speak men and sometimes that’s not the same language. I don’t know what it’s like to be a man and shoot and a man doesn’t know what it’s like to be a woman and shoot. I’ve had some fantastic men instructors, I’m not saying anything about male instructors, they don’t know what it's like to be me and shoot,” Love explained.
The differences in male and female bodies are also a factor.
"For us, we don’t have the physical strength a man has and the way we do things might look a little bit different than the way a man would do it. I think that helps a lot I like to say things that women can relate to, so related it to something that they're already familiar with and they can draw from that and it clicks a little bit better,” Love said.
When it comes to beginners who have never shot a gun Kathy says that she walks through a gun step by step without any ammunition in it to take the anxiety down.
“I will send as much time as I need to with that until they’re comfortable with that because that’s a big thing. Once you load the gun you need to do all those things correctly,” said Love.
Kathy holds classes in Missoula and Hamilton her upcoming classes can be found here.
