Serious question here. Why do women (most inexperienced women) stand like they are walking down a steep slope when they are shooting a gun? I've noticed this with rifles, shotguns and pistols. They never lean into the firearm, they always lean away from it. I don't think it's a balance issue because I have seen some, shall we say, "powder puff men" do the same thing. Any thoughts on why?

Because guns are loud and have recoil, and if you've never experienced it before it can be scary, or at least surprising, so people want to get their face as far away from the gun as they can. There's tons of videos on youtube of guys that give girls guns with huge recoil, and invariably the girl drops it, or screams, or it hits her in the face, or some other such nonsense, and the everyone has a big laugh. It's dumb. It's a god way to turn people off from shooting forever. Start people out with small guns (.22 or pellet guns) and work up to something bigger, and they'll be fine.

Lack of proper handgun shooting training.

I say it for what both loosegoose stated and GROUSEWIT . Too many think they will get hit or too loud.A friend of my brought his 2 nieces and nephew here and had them shoot handguns and rifles.At first done what was stated till got them to the point they where use to shooting and when all done all 3 know how to shoot different hand and riles. Semi auto and bolt and pumps and wheelguns. My friend and I had taught them.

And rifle , shotguns, too.

If they had proper training and snugged into their open shoulder "pocket" with their arm up , they would become one with the firearm, giving slightly with it in recoil. ALWAYS wear hearing protection.

It isn't the caliber, its the training.

X2 all above

+ women in general are more timid by design. Having seen dozens of women get their ccw and have either never shot or rarely shot before one common factor is confidence. Once their confidence is gained a woman is a powerful force. Some women need to be broken from the fear, once that is accomplished confidence & progress can be made. I've seen women go from zero experience and terrified even crying to tight groups and ear to ear smiles.

I think a lot of times the gun does not fit the person. Especially with women there is a good chance the gun is too long.

most people who do that are compensating for the weight , trying to get more stable.

in small bore rifle women can stick their support hand elbow into their hip making a very good rest and allows them to balance the weight of the rifle on the kicked out hip. if there was heavy recoil this of course wouldn't work so well.

untrained women also tend to grip the handgun poorly we call it actress grip because so many women characters in tv and movies have this bad grip not getting the web of the hand up into the back of the pistol and gripping it low.

unfortunately with the lack of good training people take the bad training they get form Hollywood . first rule of shooting , don't get your gun info from Hollywood.

I actually had one young lady who I was teaching to shoot tell me but that doesn't look cool. she had clearly gotten all of her gun info up to that point from the media. I told her any boy worth knowing would think doing it right and hitting the target was cool. any boy who thought it should look cool wasn't worth the time of day.

just so that we aren't just picking on the girls , girls are generally much easier to train if you train them right because they come with no pre-conceived notion of how they should be shooting I am specifically talking about youth 8-19 whom have never shot before or who have never shot that discipline before this is where my experience lies. on the other hand boys often come with a lot of deprogramming to do and bad habits to break. a few are sticking the stock under their arm because every gun they ever tried to that point was too large for them, putting their face over the stock because they are right handed and left eye dominate. jumping up to look over their sights , bad trigger finger position and jerking because he Red Ryder had a miserably stiff trigger .

very common , they are making a lot more youth guns now with shorter length of pull but in the past we cut a bunch down.

when it comes right down to it with an average height of a woman in the US at 5'3.75" 12 year old boy are often taller than grown women.

one of the best reasons for an AR with an adjustable stock is that a tiny woman and a large man can both shoot the same gun well , just slide the stock down a few clicks for her.

Recoil anticipation trying to get ahead of it but it's not. Not just females I have seen men/women hold the gun off of the shoulder and shoot that never goes well either.

CNN Reporter Stance

They must be doing that as a photo op. Or the person who invited them or allowed him to shoot is doing a poor job of being a range officer/master. Terrible.

I have 3 daughters. they can all shoot. one is an exceptional shot with any firearm she picks up. they grew up shooting. yes fit is important. those men that don't stand right have had no training either. I had a gunsmith make a stock for my wifes hi power and put a barreled action on it. I did the sanding and finishing and saved myself some money. wife is pretty short. she has no problem shooting it.

DelawareRob, that was an actual CNN story. The reporter pictured said it was very scary and painful shooting that ar15.

I cringe a little on the inside anytime I see someone shooting that way. Myself and my instructors would immediately try to correct that. Usually the shooter is too small for the firearm or they are afraid of the recoil. Felt recoil is less with proper shooting form. It doesn’t help to bring new shooters into our ranks by allowing them to shoot that way.

Sorry, rant over, it just grinds my gears that someone would take pictures or video someone shooting like that. To me it says more about the alleged experienced shooter rather than the beginner.

Maybe he would have walked away with a different opinion if someone would have taken 15 minutes to show him proper shooting stance and form. Probably not, but just maybe.

I think that range instructor did a bang up job of highlighting the lack of knowledge of that reporter and that might of been intentional, sometimes saying nothing lets the story say it all.

Maybe, but the only people who see the irony are people who know what they are doing. So we are the ones seeing the highlighting. The people like him who lack knowledge will not gain any knowledge and think nothing was wrong as the reported did everything correctly in their eyes, they wouldn’t have learned anything except to validate their preconceived notions about semi automatic sporting rifles.


Maybe I’m overthinking it or maybe I’m too anal. But, that range instructor would be in my office explaining himself.

The worse thing they could do is make him look like he really knows what he's talking about, this gave us the option to address the lack of knowledge that's where that Meme came from!