Category Archives: Famous 2A Females

Paxton Quigley

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Coming from a liberal, mid-western, anti-gun background, Paxton Quigley made an about-face when her best friend was raped. She vowed not to let it happen to her. She bought a gun and became an expert on self-defense. Her first book Armed & Female was a best seller. She became a spokesperson for Smith & Wesson and a firearms instructor.

  • graduate of Northwestern University in Communications
  • Masters Degree in Anthropology from the University of Chicago
  • 1968 presidential-campaign staff of Senator Robert Kennedy
  • Helped create the National Committee for Handgun Control
  • wrote a political science text- book
  • wrote a cartoon book on pregnancy for non-English speakers
  • director of community relations for Playboy Enterprises
  • a close friend was raped at home 10 minutes before police answered her emergency call for help
  • 1989 author “Armed & Female.”
  • as a firearms instructor, has taught 7,000 women how to shoot a handgun for self-defense
  • April 27, 1995 author “Not an Easy Target: Paxton Quigley’s Self-Protection for Women“
  • August 30, 2005 author “Stayin’ Alive: Armed and Female in an Unsafe World”
  • September 15, 2010 author “Armed &  Female: Taking Control“
  • spokesperson for Smith & Wesson
  • was Yoko Ono’s  bodyguard
  • has appeared on more than 300 TV and radio shows
  • hosts a radio show called “Cannabis Healing With Paxton Quigley,”

She trained at

  • Executive Security International
  • Lethal Force Institute
  • Gunsite Academy



Margaret Thompson Murdock

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First markswoman in history to win an Olympic medal
(men and women competed against her)

August 25, 1942

  • She learned how to shoot by following her father to the rifle range
  • Attended Kansas State University
  • competed on the Kansas State University men’s rifle team
    – winning two Big Eight Conference championships
    – the university’s first female student to earn a varsity letter
  • four-years in the U.S. Army,  assigned as a shooting instructor at Fort Benning, achieved the rank of major
  • 1966 World Champion in Women’s Standard Rifle
  • first woman to win an individual open World Shooting Championship
  • 1967 she won two gold medals in small-bore rifle at the Pan American Games and set a world record, for men or women, in the kneeling rifle shooting
  • 1976 first woman ever on the U.S. Olympic shooting team
  • 1976 silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics
  • first woman to win a medal in Shooting at the Summer Olympics
  • 1977 retired from competitive shooting at age 35 and become a registered nurse
  • 1992 named to the U.S. International Shooting Hall of Fame
  • In international competition Murdock set four individual world records and nine team world records
  • She is a member of five halls of fame, including
    USA Shooting Hall of Fame and Kansas Sports Hall of Fame

My first year at K-State, I couldn’t shoot on the team because I was a female. I could practice with the K-State team but I couldn’t be on the team. They got a new coach and he thought it would be a good idea for me to be on the team since I was shooting better than everyone else. ”
— Murdock, reminiscing in 2011

Joyce Lee Malcolm

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(October 17, 1941)
– 1994 author  To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right

Marion P. Hammer

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April 26, 1939

Grandmother, 2A Activist

  • She learned to shoot “squirrels and rabbits for dinner” with a .22 bolt-action single-shot rifle
  • Florida’s top gun lobbyist
  • 1974 – Present – NRA lobbyist from Florida
  • 1976 – Today – Runs the Unified Sportsmen of Florida (USF)
  • 1987 – Lobbied for Florida concealed-carry (CCW) 
  • 1988 – creator of the NRA Eddie Eagle Program
  • Created the Range Protection Act.
  • 1993 – Outstanding Community Service Award from National Safety Council
  • 1995 to 1998 – 1st female president of the National Rifle Association NRA
  • 2005 – Florida Women’s Hall of Fame
  • 2005 – Involved in the Florida Stand-your-ground law – “one of the chief architects”  first to be passed in the United States

Eleanor Roosevelt

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October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962

  • 1933 – 1945  First Lady of the United States
  • 1957 – New York CCW
  • she carried a pistol instead of Secret Service protection

“After the head of the Secret Service found I was not going to allow an agent to accompany me everywhere, he went one day to Louis Howe [FDR’s secretary], plunked a revolver down on the table and said ‘Well, all right, if Mrs. Roosevelt is going to drive around the country alone, at least ask her to carry this in the car.’”

Eleanor’s autobiography

“When Roosevelt defied death threats by the Ku Klux Klan to travel  to Tennessee in 1958 to attend a civil rights workshop, she and the woman who picked her up at the Nashville airport drove to the conference with ‘a loaded pistol on the front seat between them.’”

her biographer Allida Black

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, “You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys to a More Fulfilling Life”

Ida B. Wells

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July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931

  • Investigative journalist, educator
  • Early leader in the civil rights movement
  • co- founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
  • Born in Mississippi
  • moved to Memphis, Tennessee
  • moved to Chicago, Illinois

“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” – 1882

Annie Oakley

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August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926

“Miss Annie Oakley”, “Watanya Cicilla” (Little Sure Shot), “Little Miss Sure Shot”

  • America’s first female star
  • Annie Oakley taught more than 15,000 women how to use a gun
  • Sixth of nine children ( born Phoebe Ann Mosey )(Phoebe Ann Moses)
  • began trapping before the age of seven
  • began shooting and hunting by age eight
  • 1865 – Her skill paid off the mortgage on her mother’s farm (when Annie was 15)
  • 1872 – Annie ran away from the home where she was “employed”
  • 1881 – Thanksgiving Day, Baughman & Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati – Frank E. Butler placed a $100 bet he could beat any local “fancy shooter”, Butler lost the match and the bet
  • 1882 – Oakley married Frank Butler
  • 1885 – They joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show
    ( She earned more than any performer, except for “Buffalo Bill” Cody himself )
  • 1889 – Paris Exposition
  • 1898 – Oakley promoted women in combat ops for the US Military
  • 1894 – Performed in the eleventh film made = The “Little Sure Shot of the Wild West,” (the 11th movie made on earth, by the inventor of motion pictures)
  • 1902 – left the Buffalo Bill show for good
  • 1902 – The Western Girl a stage play written especially for her
  • 1904 – A newspaper reporter wrote a libelous article, Oakley spent 6 years dealing with libel lawsuits (lost only one of 55)
  • 1912 – Annie Oakley House built in Cambridge, Maryland
    Oakley collected less in judgments than her legal expenses
  • Oakley continued to set records into her sixties
  • 1922 – She hit 100 clay targets in a row from 16 yards (at age 62)
  • Oakley was involved in extensive philanthropy for women’s rights and the support of young women she knew
  • 1922 – a car accident forced her to wear a steel brace on her right leg
  • 1925 – visited to the Grand American (Shotgun shoot) and “breaks a 97”
  • 1925 – she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of 66 
  • 1925 – Butler was so grieved by her death he stopped eating and died 18 days later 
  • Oakley’s ashes were placed in one of her prized trophies and laid next to Butler’s body in his coffin 
  • After her death, it was discovered that she spent her entire fortune on her family and her charities
  • 1981 – Annie Oakley Committee placed a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of her birth site
  • 1996 – The Annie Oakley House added to the National Register of Historic Places 
  • Trapshooting Hall of Fame
  • National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame 
  • National Women’s Hall of Fame
  • Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame
  • New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Oakley’s personal possessions, performance memorabilia, and firearms are on permanent exhibit in the Garst Museum and the National Annie Oakley Center in Greenville, Ohio

Oakley believed that women should learn to use a gun for the empowering image that it gave

I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies.

Oakley believed strongly that it was crucial for women to learn how to use a gun, as not only a form of physical and mental exercise, but also to defend themselves

http://www.pssatrap.org/webmaster/annieoakley.htm

Mary Fields

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1832 – Dec 5, 1914

“Stagecoach Mary”

  • Born a slave in Tennessee
  • 1865 – freed when slavery was outlawed
  • 1870 – Worked on the steamboat Robert E. Lee 
  • 1884 – moved to Montana
  • 1885 – first African American woman to become a U.S. postal service Star Route mail carrier
  • 1885 – 1889 – 1st Star Route
  • 1889 – 1893 – 2nd Star Route
  • 1894 – opened a restaurant in Cascade, MT Fields would serve food to anyone, whether they could pay or not (closed in 10 months)
  • 1895 – at 60+ years old, Fields was hired as a mail carrier
    This made her the second woman &
    first African American woman to work for the U.S. Postal Service
    At 60 yrs old, she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses
    If the snow was too deep for her horses, Fields delivered the mail in snowshoes
  • hard-drinking, quick-shooting mail carrier sported two guns
    fended off an angry pack of wolves with her rifle
  • 1910 – When the local motel was sold, a stipulation to the transaction was that all meals for Mary Fields would be offered free of charge for the rest of her life
  • 1912 – her laundry business and her home burned down, the townspeople gathered and built her a new home.
  • 1914 – her funeral was one of the largest the town had ever seen
  • 1959 – actor Gary Cooper met Fields when he was a child, and wrote an account of his memories of her in Ebony magazine
  • 2015-2016 – AMC series, “Hell On Wheels”, featured in 5 episodes, Fields is played by Amber Chardae Robinson

“She drinks whiskey, and she swears, and she is a republican, which makes her a low, foul creature.”

schoolgirl’s essay writing about “Stagecoach Mary”

“Born a slave somewhere in Tennessee, Mary lived to become one of the freest souls ever to draw a breath, or a .38.”

Montana native Gary Cooper 

Harriet Tubman

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March 1822 – March 10, 1913

  • Araminta “Minty” Ross
  • Born into slavery
  • 1844 – Married John Tubman
  • changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage
  • 1849 – escaped and made 13 missions to rescue 70+ slaves
  • Tubman carried a small revolver, and was not afraid to use it
  • 1858 – met abolitionist John Brown and became “General Tubman” when she helped him plan his raid (that he was killed for)
  • 1859 – Purchased property in Auburn, New York
  • 1860 – her last rescue mission
  • Civil War worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy
  • 1863 – The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war
  • June 1 & 2, 1863 – Tubman guided the raid at Combahee Ferry wich liberated 700+ slaves
  • 1865 She returned home to NY
  • 1869 – Her biography was published – Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
  • 1886 – Volume 2 was published – Harriet, the Moses of her People
  • 1889 – Congress passed and President William McKinley finally approved a $20 per month pension for some of her efforts during the Civil War
  • 1896 – keynote speaker at first meeting of  National Federation of Afro-American Women
  • 1908 – Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged  opened on her NY property
  • 1913 – She was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, NY
  • 1937 – Her grave marker was erected by the Empire State Federation of Women’s Clubs
  • 1999 – Her grave was added to National Register of Historic Places

“There was one of two things I had a right to”, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other”

Tubman