Antonia Okafor joins the podcast to talk about the right to protect yourself through gun ownership — because gun rights are women’s rights. We discuss how the increase of crime across the country has led to an increase in gun ownership, including the trend of women buying a gun for the first time. We also get into the importance of learning how to use a weapon properly. So, if you’ve considered getting a gun and don’t know where to begin, this episode is for you.
Antonia Okafor is the Director of Women’s Outreach and National Spokesperson for Gun Owners of America. Her written work has been published by the New York Times, NBC Universal, and Fox News among others. She appears regularly on CNN and Fox News and is a certified firearms trainer, regularly teaching female, first-time shooters.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg. And on today’s episode we talk about the right to protect yourself through gun ownership because gun rights are women’s rights. We’re going to discuss how the increase of crime across the country has led to an increase in gun ownership, including the trend of women buying a gun for the first time. We’ll also get into the importance of learning how to use a weapon properly. So if you’ve considered getting a gun and don’t know where to begin, this episode is for you. We have a wonderful guest to break it all down. Antonio Okafor is with us. She is the Director of Women’s Outreach and National Spokesperson for Gun Owners of America. Her written work has been published by the New York Times, NBC Universal, Fox News, among others. She regularly appears on CNN and Fox News and is a certified firearms trainer, regularly teaching female, first-time shooters. And it is a pleasure to have her on our program today. Antonia, thank you so much for being here.
Antonia Okafor:
Thank you for having me, Beverly. This is great.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I thought we would first just get into your own personal experience about how you became a first-time gun owner, and then got to the point where you are today, which is advocating for people’s rights to protect themselves, including even being a certified firearms trainer. What led you down this path?
Antonia Okafor:
Yeah, I always like to start off with telling people that it is always about the fact that I am not the typical gun owner, right? I’m also not the typical person to become a gun rights activist. I started out, I would say, in a family that was primarily anti-gun. My parents are immigrants from Nigeria and grew up in a mostly Democratic household. But even more so, I grew up in a household that didn’t really talk about guns or firearm ownership, much less the Second Amendment. So when I did come into my own, I even wanted to pursue that policy for myself, say in college and high school. Again, I grew up Democrat, so I just followed the party platform. Until I realized … I’m a sexual assault survivor myself, and so a big aspect of my life has always been about trying to get that power back, empowering myself again, and empowering other women, other peers of mine.
It’s through that realization, through, actually, that feminist mindset of independence of wanting to be able to take care of myself and being proactive before anybody wanted to be able to make me a victim again … I was always going towards that path of trying to empower myself and other women around me. And so in college, it was then that I realized through the epidemic of sexual assault cases on college campuses … that was really brought to light by President Obama, at the time, with studies that he had in universities across the country … I realized that if I truly wanted to empower myself and empower other women around me, I needed to be an advocate for the Second Amendment and I needed to be an advocate for myself and protecting myself.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so when you decided to go down to this path of being able to protect yourself, to hopefully prevent any type of victimization in the future so that you would have an equal footing if a man tried to attack you, were nervous when you first started looking into how you use a gun? Was it a complicated process for you, even trying to figure out, “How do I get a gun?”
Antonia Okafor:
Oh, yeah. It was completely foreign to me. Completely foreign to me. Again, you hear the advocate or the person who grew up with firearms. They talk about the stories where their grandpappy or their grandpa or their dad took them out hunting, or whatever. Most of the time, for someone who is a pro-gun person right now, usually has some type of recollection of being familiar with it in some way or fashion. I had no recollection. All I saw was what I saw in TV and media, all mostly negative. So when it came down to having a firearm and realizing, first of all, that the Liberty principle in itself … that I have a God-given right to defend myself and my own life … and realizing that that firearm is a tool and not a weapon only used for people who are evil, obviously, but used in defense of people who are good and trying to do the right thing … Once I had that a-ha moment, that is really what got me down the path of training.
I was being cyber-stalked at the time, actually, in college. A male firearm instructor in the community kind of took me under his wing and took me out to the range and helped me to shoot, and helped me to pursue my training and getting a license to carry. It really helps me kind of get through that resistance that I had initially of just completely not being familiar at all with firearms. That is really what helped in my journey in continuing my training with firearm ownership.
Beverly Hallberg:
What has your family’s response been to you? You went through, you described it, and just how this isn’t something that you saw growing up. What has it been like for your family to see this progression in you?
Antonia Okafor:
Oh, man. It’s a progression, right? It’s a progression even with my family, for the most part. Going back now, now when I have my sisters telling me, “Look, I went to the firearm range and I went shooting,” and my brother asking me, especially during COVID, “How do I purchase a firearm? Well, how does this look? Can you help me? Can you train me?” It was definitely a journey. Especially not just my family, but my friends, right? Because like I said, at the time, I was a leftist. I was a feminist in, what we see of today, the modern feminist narrative. That was pretty much anti-gun, so the people I was around, they were pretty much anti-gun as well, especially my family. But what I’ve come to know, as well, is that for the most part, it’s maybe, at best, an apathy, right?
It’s just most people don’t really delve into the policy issues every day for themselves until it happens to them. So what I found over the years is that a lot of those people that I thought were just blanket, anti-gun people just never really had a good experience, or just a decent, positive experience, or experience at all. I was able to be a part of that link for them to go out to the range. Maybe not change their policy or their thinking when it comes to the platforms that they lean towards. But for the most part, I’m just helping them with that fear, taking away that fear that they initially have about firearm ownership. And having that relation, that person close to them, being myself, has helped break down those barriers as well.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I think for women, being a gun owner, a responsible gun owner, makes so much sense because when you think about potentially being attacked, we think about the strength of men. This is a broad generalization but, typically, a man is stronger than a woman, so a gun is that great equalizer for you. As we have seen crime increase, especially in large cities across the country, have you also seen a correlation with the amount of women who decide to be a gun owner for the first time?
Antonia Okafor:
Absolutely. I know that the stats actually prove this work that I’ve been doing and have been a part of, and the movement that I’ve been seeing for years now, but especially during COVID. GOA sponsors an event with Rick Ector. He’s a firearms instructor in Detroit, and he does this event every year, for the last 10 years now, with mostly Black women. But all women are able to, for free, be able to shoot, to learn how to shoot for the first time, and many of them are. I remember in 2020, the height of COVID and everything, of women just coming to me and saying, “Wow, I’m so glad there’s something like this. I’m never thought I would be a gun owner. I voted this way, mostly Democrat. I voted this way. But man, this is changing my mind on my perspective about firearm ownership.”
Because for the most part, I know that I’m in danger. I know, especially during COVID, it was an even more heightened sense of awareness of “If I don’t defend myself, more than likely … ” There were police stations, there were Sheriff’s offices, for their county or for their area, saying, “Look, we’re over capacity. We’re at capacity, at least. We can’t help you.” “More than likely you need to do things on your own,” was the message that a lot of people got during COVID. And that’s what women got, especially, is that they realized that their safety is up to them. Their self-defense is up to them. Taking care of their family is up to them. That’s the message that I got to talk to a lot of these women just face-to-face. And again, like I said, the statistics show that a lot of women … actually, four million women to be exact … became gun owners from 2019 to 2021. That’s a Harvard study just right there, and Georgetown also did a study confirming that study as well. It’s a great time to be a female gun owner for sure.
Beverly Hallberg:
And of course, as we’ve seen, at the same time that women are choosing to protect themselves in this way, we are also seeing a correlation of laws across the country, in various states, try to put tougher restrictions on gun ownership. There’s the state level and what’s going on. There’s also the federal government and trying to have stricter gun control laws. From the federal angle, what type of common legal battles or legislative battles are we seeing across the board that’s trying to prevent people from the ability to protect themselves?
Antonia Okafor:
Oh, man. It goes across the board. So we’ll start with the state level, right? One thing we saw was this big push again. A lot of people got it when it came to COVID, that the government has no reason, especially, to be involved in saying if I can be able to defend myself or not. A lot of people took to constitutional carry. Which in the name, constitutional carry just says that the government has no reason and cannot enact any type of financial or permit barrier to be able to keep and bear your firearm outside of a home. And so that’s the wave that we saw with constitutional carry, state by state. We saw in Texas … which, by the way, was the 21st state to enact constitutional carry … but we saw this big way up after the fact.
And then, of course, we got the pushback. But mostly federally, of course, because we have a president, President Joe Biden, that is very openly anti-gun. And so what we’re seeing is, of course, these “so-called assault weapons bans,” with Congress pushing that. I actually got the opportunity to speak against that in Congress a few months ago. But unfortunately, this is the type of agenda that we’ve seen with President Biden and his administration, of course … Unfortunately, mostly on the anti-gun side and not about protecting our rights as citizens to defend ourselves with a firearm. So we’re seeing it on the state level, we’re seeing it on the federal level. Most people who are seeing these things, though, are seeing something that’s against what they believe is to hold true and dear, and that’s that their Second Amendment is a protection of a human right that we have. And we’re not seeing the federal level protect those protections.
Beverly Hallberg:
And even beyond legislatively what we’re seeing, there’s also been a trend where credit card companies want to list whether or not you purchase anything potentially related to a gun, whether it’s ammunition or just walked into a store that may have guns. What should people know about the different banks that they use and how they could be tracked based on their purchasing?
Antonia Okafor:
Yeah. I mean, really, the simple answer is use cash when you can, right? Use cash when you can. Unfortunately, the credit card companies coming out and pushing these policies … It’s stuff that we’ve already seen hidden and part of a long history of not only these private companies but, of course, the federal government and the ATF that have used registration to be able to keep track of people. So we see with the tax stamp, of course, with the NFA that’s been around for decades, now. We’ve seen all these different types of policies that, by the way, are bureaucratic policies that have never been voted on. These policies that go through the ATF that do allow the government to keep track of people who have firearms, and the accessories are the things that they buy in order to go with their firearm ownership.
So these private companies that are coming out, being anti-gun, and saying these things that are adamantly anti-Second Amendment, adamantly anti self-defense and protection, is unfortunately this trend that we’re seeing. These big corporations who do not care about the individual person. I’m sure the CEOs and those people are more than happy to pay the money for security for themselves, like we see with Congress, and those people who push anti-gun policies. But when it comes to the individual, when it comes to the person who can’t pay for security and protection for themselves, they’re more than happy to make sure that it makes it harder for us, and has the financial barriers in place that make it even more taxing for us to be able to defend ourselves.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, I want to take a brief moment to talk to you, our listeners. You may know that Independent Women’s Forum is the leading national women’s organization dedicated to enhancing people’s freedom, opportunities, and wellbeing. But did you know that we are also here to bring you, women and men on the go, the news? You can listen to our High Noon podcast, an intellectual download featuring conversations that make a free society possible. Hear guests like Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin discuss the most controversial subjects of the day, or join us for happy hour with At the Bar, where hosts Inez Stepman and Jennifer Braceras chat on the latest issues at the intersection of law, politics, and culture. You can listen to past episodes at iwf.org, or search for High Noon or At the Bar in your favorite podcast app. Well, Antonia, I want to move now to maybe the question one of our listeners, or multiple listeners, are asking themselves, which is, “Look, I really want to protect myself. I don’t even know where to begin. How do I buy a gun? How do I get trained?” What advice do you give to people?
Antonia Okafor:
So I get this question a lot, especially from women who are saying, “I want to begin my firearm ownership journey. How do I start? What gun advice or tips do you have?” More importantly, I would say the biggest one I get is, “Which firearm should I buy first? Which handgun should I buy? Which rifle?” The first thing I tell them is please, I’m not going to give you any recommendations. Because just like anything else, it is an individual decision. It’s a journey that you have to make. And if you want to take this journey, you have to be hands-on and you have to go to the range. You have to go and figure out which firearm is best for you, the grip that’s best for you.
We have so many different customizations and utilizations in that framework, but it only comes down to that person who’s going to be able to utilize that by knowing what’s best for them and by going to the range and shooting those firearms for themselves. So I would say first, go to the range. For women, go to a ladies night. A lot of ranges these days have ladies nights where they discount the cost significantly, and they allow you to try out different types of firearms and rent them so you can be able to find what’s best for yourself first.
Beverly Hallberg:
And something that you mentioned there is training as well, the importance of training. Let’s say you figure out what gun you do want to purchase. How long does training take? What is your rhythm like, as far as just making sure that you do go to the shooting range and making sure that your shot, it’s practiced, it’s ready to go? What do you recommend on that level?
Antonia Okafor:
Yeah. Policy wise, blanket statement wise, is that I and GOA believes that the government should not mandate the type of training that you need or how much training that you need. Like we were talking about earlier, you can go from someone who has some type of recollection, some experience of having a firearm around their home or going hunting, et cetera, versus me. My story is I never even touched a firearm or was afraid of firearms until I started training for myself. So it comes down to you, again, as an individual. Your familiarity of what it is for you and how you’re able to go about it is going to be an individual journey. And so I would say the first thing, though, is most states do have license to carry, and some states will have constitutional carry, but for the most part you can still get your license.
They usually have some type of recommended training that goes along with it. That’s the bare minimum, I would say. For the most part, it’s, “Do you know how to shoot? Can you aim and shoot and make sure you’re safe with it?” That’s usually the biggest type of training that I would go for. And there’s many reasons to have a license to carry, even when you have constitutional carry in place. But for the most part, that’s kind of a guideline I would give. Look at your state guidelines and see what’s best for you. I would at least meet that measure. And for the most part, though, you’re going to have to do way more training for the rest of your life to make sure that you’re a proficient and efficient firearms owner as well.
Beverly Hallberg:
And you have two young kids. Any advice you’d give to mothers out there, or fathers who are listening to this, on how you can keep your home safe from children, but still be able to have a firearm in the house?
Antonia Okafor:
Yeah. It’s, again, a journey. What I love about the firearm ownership and my journey is that 10 years ago, it was completely different. Five years ago, it was completely different, even when I was a gun owner. And then now, I have children, and a home, and et cetera, and family. Yeah, that’s the type of stuff that you need to think about. I mean, I still think, of course, be safe with everything. One thing I do with my children, actually … Very young. I have a two-year-old and a nine-month-old. But the two-year-old … I mean, honestly, since birth, we were reading him books about firearm safety, and now he’s going along with those books now and he’s talking about folding stock and he’s talking about the parts of a firearm. It’s education. It always comes down to it, regardless of what age you are.
But I think the best thing you can do right now, especially if you have little ones, is educate them about firearm ownership. That it’s a tool, that it’s a very important tool, and there are things that you touch and you don’t touch. But for the most part it’s to demystify, essentially, the scariness of a firearm by education. And then when he, and she, are old enough for me to give them training and go along with the actual firearm, then they have that basis, that knowledge base to able to go and shoot and learn how to shoot for themselves. But I would say the earlier, the better is teaching them. Even when you’re not using the actual firearm, to be teaching and educating them so they’re safe and that they’re knowledgeable. And also, that they take away that fear that comes with firearm ownership that is pushed on them through a narrative of the media and news, so that they’re educated for themselves.
Beverly Hallberg:
And just final question for you. I know that you do so much work on trying to protect people’s rights to protect themselves. Where do you see this country in let’s say five, 10 years? I realize this is a big broad question. But what type of fight are we up against in order to keep this right for ourselves?
Antonia Okafor:
Well, we’re seeing a lot of things. Even with the Supreme Court, we’re seeing it with Bruen v. The New York Rifle and Pistol Association decision. That essentially was telling these states that main issue that we’re making you have to have a “good enough reason” to be able to even get a license to carry. These states are being pushed back through that decision. We’re still seeing, of course, a lot of states like New York, who are still pushing back and making other requirements to skirt around these decisions and guidelines that they should have been enacting in the first place. But they’re just making their own type of laws to make it harder for their citizens, even despite the Supreme Court decision. At the end of the day though, we’re going to have a lot of people who are looking to the Supreme Court to hopefully be able to make the right decisions on firearm ownership.
But I think COVID really changed the perspective of a lot of the individual citizens, that they cannot expect the government to always be on the side of being able to protect their Second Amendment, whether that’s on the state level, local level, or on the federal level like we’ve seen. So it’s people who are becoming individuals themselves to protect their Second Amendment right and their everyday livelihood. It comes down to them pursuing their gun rights in their local area, whether it’s municipality, their city level. Making sure that they are sanctuary states from sanctuary cities. Sanctuary states that we’ve seen, especially during COVID, where people were taking gun rights into their own hands and saying that we will not allow any more gun restrictions from the federal level or from the state level. And we’re going to make sure, locally, that we are able to defend ourselves as well.
Beverly Hallberg:
The Second Amendment is an important right that we all have, and we appreciate the fight that you’ve had for that, and also, Gun Owners of America. Antonio Okafor, thank you so much for joining us today.
Antonia Okafor:
Thank you so much for having me.
Beverly Hallberg:
And thank you for joining us. Before you go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and wellbeing for all Americans. So please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That is iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or review. It does help, and we’d love it if you shared this episode so your friends can know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for watching.
