Trends Observed At An
All-Female Gun Shop
Massad Ayoob with members of the FITS team, including Jennifer Gebhardt (left)
and Candy Straughan (right).
Previous issues of Shooting Industry have featured numerous articles and columns (including this one) with a focus on retail firearms emporiums owned by women. When I was recently teaching judicious use of deadly force in Slidell, La., several folks told me my gun shop tour might be spiced up by a local store and range owned and staffed entirely by women. I was intrigued and paid a visit. What I found was definitely interesting and instructive.
A bit of history is in order. Along about 2006, one Robert Midkiss built the FITS gun shop and range in Slidell. His chosen name for his business stood for “Firearms Instruction, Training & Sales.” (Today’s owners joke it now stands for “Females In Tactical Shorts.”) The founder passed away not long after, and for many years his widow, Taffy Midkiss, ran it. Joel Freeland took ownership in 2016. A high school classmate of Freeland’s, Candy Straughan, was a middle school English teacher who was also a certified firearms instructor — and ended up teaching part-time at FITS.
Along came 2020 and the pandemic.
Straughan told SI, “When COVID hit, they kicked us out of our classrooms, and I did online teaching in junior high. However, the range was still open, so I could teach full-time there. Meanwhile, Jennifer Gebhardt had started doing administration stuff for FITS during the pandemic. By then, I was ready to get out of being a schoolteacher. Jennifer and I bought the business from Joel in July 2021. At that point, we had been running the operation for a while anyway.”
A Familiar Origin
FITS is both a retail gun shop and a firearms training center. Straughan’s path to becoming an advanced firearms instructor parallels in many ways the sort of thing that brings customers to her: a precipitating incident.
“I became an instructor because I wanted women to be empowered,” she shared. “Sixteen years ago, I was married to a husband who worked out of town and who was away when someone tried to kick in my front door. It seemed like an eternity from my phone call to 911 to the outcome. I had a cell phone in one hand and a tennis racquet in the other and three little kids.”
Thankfully, the cops got there in time.
Straughan continued, “I knew then I needed a level playing field if something like that ever happened again. My husband wasn’t a shooter, but he was not unwilling for me to get into guns. I’d shot guns my dad or granddad handed to me loaded, so that was the start of my journey.”
Straughan admits to having a “rocky start” learning how to handle firearms effectively, but it all changed thanks to some help from the principal of her school.
“My school principal and I had a conversation, and she said, ‘I can teach you to shoot a gun.’ That was the start of my connection,” Straughan shared. “It wasn’t long before she told me, ‘You should teach women how to do this!’”
Thus began Straughan’s fast-moving odyssey of advanced training at many schools under many experts — culminating with her recent certification as an Advanced Rangemaster Instructor under the legendary Tom Givens.
Today, she says of FITS, “We hold regular concealed carry permit classes for our state and for Mississippi’s Enhanced Carry, then we do a whole bunch of ladies’ nights for new shooters — gateway instruction.”
On occasion, FITS offers the next steps up, including holster-draw clinics and “Should I Shoot?” classes.
“We use the USCCA curriculum. Our teaching staff are all USCCA- and NRA-certified instructors,” she informed. “Our state had permitless carry come in as of July 4, 2024, and we go over state laws for permitless carry. Some of those we offer free as a service to the community and from there, a lot of people decide to take our CCW class for the permit — which still has some distinct advantages.”
Percentages
When I first walked into FITS, I noticed two things: Every single person behind the counter was female, and every single customer on the buying side of the counter at that particular time was male.
Straughan told us, “Our female customer percentage has definitely increased. A lot of our classes are 50/50 between the genders. But coming to our range alone, we see more males. We’re just trying to get past the stereotypes. A lot of both genders come back after their first exposure.”
FITS does offer all-female classes.
“Ladies’ night is held twice a month. The discounted price includes trying different guns with us providing ammo, though we encourage them to use their own guns if they have them,” Straughan shared. “Ladies’ night is three hours of safety and shooting training; each woman fires an average of 15 rounds with one-on-one instruction. A few fire five and say, ‘That’s enough,’ and we tell them, ‘I’m proud of you [for trying].’ At least as many have so much fun that afterward, they get a firing lane and we let them shoot some more — supervised.”
How have gun sales to women been? Straughan explained.
“Over the past few years, our highest selling guns have been the Smith & Wesson Shield series, especially the EZ models with the easy-racking slides — 60% in .380 and 40% in 9mm,” she said.
Getting Active Beyond Retail Sales
FITS is affiliated with Armed Women of America, formerly known as The Well-Armed Women (founded by Carrie Lightfoot). Gebhardt, Straughan and their team are also very active with Women For Gun Rights, formerly the DC Project, and have spent a lot of time at the state capitol fighting for gun owners’ rights.
By the way, it turns out FITS is not entirely testosterone-free behind the counter. Jennifer’s dad, Charlie Donovan, is a retired cop and the current staff gunsmith. A few men also work part-time in gun sales and as range safety officers.
For a long time now, female customers have been increasingly important to the bottom line of retail gun shops and have been disproportionately powerful and persuasive in testifying on behalf of gun owners’ civil rights in legislative environments.
This influence has increased profoundly since the pandemic, which raised America’s consciousness as to the importance of self-reliance in all sorts of emergencies — including self-protection and family protection.
All of us in the firearms industry can learn from Jennifer Gebhardt and Candy Straughan’s experience at FITS in Louisiana.
