By Tricia Wisehart, Oklahoma State Director Women for Gun Rights
My name is Tricia Wisehart, the Oklahoma State Director for Women for Gun Rights. I am a Range Safety Officer, active in women’s shooting leagues, and I am passionate about volunteering in my community, including advocating for women’s gun rights.
Women for Gun Rights is an educational, nonpartisan initiative that brings women together to establish relationships with their legislators on both a state and federal level. Women for Gun Rights was founded by retired Tulsa police officer, Dianna Muller, in 2015 and our focus is to advocate 2nd Amendment rights for women and to ensure that women have a voice in the conversation. We started out with the focus at a national level with a group of 50 women, one from each state, visiting Washington D.C. at least annually to meet with legislators from all 50 states. In 2020, the focus changed to also include legislation at the state level and that is when I became involved as the Oklahoma State Director. Our primary goals as an organization are:
Education: Raising awareness among community members, including legislators, that firearm safety and violence prevention are achieved through education, not legislation. We want to promote safe handling and storage of firearms: 0 is the only acceptable number of firearms accidents.
Preservation of our gun culture: promoting the positive aspects of firearms ownership such as the benefits of conservation and the financial contributions from hunting, competitive sports, and self defense.
Advocacy: women are among the fastest growing demographic of gun owners in recent years and we want to make sure they join us in advocating for our right to choose to own a firearm.
We also develop partnerships with other groups to support our mission of education including:
Kid S.A.F.E. Foundation that teaches firearms safety and has taught 30,000+ kids across 9 states, including Oklahoma for the first time this year.
FASTER Saves Lives (Faculty & Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response) that teaches emergency response skills.
Hold My Guns that works to provide safe storage of firearms for people in crisis or have a need to prevent unauthorized access.
As the Oklahoma State Director, I plan at least one visit to the Oklahoma State Capitol to meet with our legislators every legislative session. They learn that we are a bi-partisan cross-section of Oklahoma women-moms, daughters, wives. Some of us are experts in firearms education and safety and some have experienced violence but all believe in our right to own firearms.
I would like to encourage you to visit WomenforGunRIghts.org and sign up to receive newsletters about upcoming activities. We need ladies from every district to join us so that we can ensure our legislators understand that we are women who SUPPORT the 2nd Amendment and we are happy to be a resource for them in conveying that message as they work to get legislation passed (or opposed) in the next session. Oklahoma ladies will be going back to our State Capitol next February so please think about getting involved! We often think “someone else will stand up and speak up for our rights” but we, each of us, are that someone!
