The community has thus far been extremely supportive of women. Some of the most popular competitive shooters are females. Sporting clays is extremely popular with women now. Lena Miculek especially has made quite a name for herself.

Despite what the media likes to portray, the gun community isn't a bunch of racist rednecks and tends to be a very open and welcoming group. Just don't bring up politics...

I grew up attending a Rod and Gun club where that was certainly not the case. Women were outright not allowed to register unless they married in, and the misogyny was palpable. That's just my personal experience, but I have yet to meet another group that rivals their level of gatekeeping.

Surely this wasn't the birthplace of Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Belle Star, Harriet Tubman, etc etc etc.

I really think this is a great development. The only political cause I have ever donated to is gun rights, as I essentially view it as the canary in the coal mine for civil liberties in america. I would like to see gun owners as diverse as possible.

I would assume this is strictly a function of the more recent polarization of the political spectrum. I read the paper but it doesn't break down all the numbers in a more detailed way.

>Firearms are heirlooms in most families,

I assume that cheap stuff outnumbers nice stuff by a few orders of magnitude, just like every other consumer facing industry.

Kind of. The "Saturday Night Special", a racist term for a cheap handgun, generally refers to a Hi-Point or similar cheap polymer pistol, and used to refer to inexpensive revolvers. An heirloom may be a nice bolt-action or a Colt 1911 from one of the World Wars. Most modern guns are very good, though, especially compared to even 20 years ago. The Sig Sauer P365 is a great example, fitting 10+1 rounds of 9mm ammo into a complete package that would have barely fit 7+1 of .380 just 10 years ago.

Less that you'd think so, there's strict limits to how cheap you can make guns while their still being safe. Heirloom grade guns, though, not so much, nobody is going to treat a Glock as one unless it acquired that through its importance to a family over the years. Like one inexpensive and very worn 1930s .22LR I have that was first owned by my grandfather; still works very well though and doesn't look really bad or anything.

>there's strict limits to how cheap you can make guns while their still being safe

We are nowhere near that limit.

Handguns are hundred year old technology with few parts requiring good machining tolerances and lend themselves well to being manufactured in the cheapest places on earth.

The fact that a bottom dollar handgun in the may cost as much as a bottom dollar replacement engine for a piece of power equipment that has many more parts, many more features requiring fairly precise machining, requires far more assembly and is many times larger is a testament to the cost of complying with industry regulation.

>I assume that cheap stuff outnumbers nice stuff by a few orders of magnitude, just like every other consumer facing industry.

Depends on when it was made. Stuff made in the 70s and earlier are very high quality. Probably just like every other consumer facing industry. Even today, you can find cheap guns, but they're still made mostly of steel and they have to survive an explosion, so they're pretty sturdy.