At this year’s 2017 USCCA Concealed Carry Expo in Fort Worth, Texas, I had the opportunity to lead a panel of women: five leaders and trailblazers in our industry who have each carved out unique paths but who all fight for the same 2^nd Amendment goals. We explored a variety of topics — from working with female shooters to getting friends and family involved with safe firearms — but one question revealed some powerful and poignant answers … the type of answers that the anti-gun media tries to cover up or hide.

Is it just me, or Women Empowerment become really popular discussion topic? What a strong stance those two words alone take. I am 100% sure when women around the world hear those words “Women Empowerment” it makes them pull their shoulders back and hold their head up a little higher.

It's been around 3.5 years since the last similar blog was published.  And not surprisingly, quite a few blogs from back in that day have disappeared or became inactive.  Quite a few gun blogs and websites for women have also flourished since that time.

The results of a study performed by the Crime Prevention Research Center this month supports reports that concealed-carry permit applications are soaring nationally, but particularly among women and minorities.

According to this story from dailysignal.com, the report says, “In eight states where we have data by gender, since 2012 the number of permits has increased by 161 percent for women and by 85 percent for men.”

Additionally, the report says, “from 2007 through 2015, concealed-carry permits issued by state and local governments increased by 75 percent faster among nonwhites than whites, according to the report.”

Some wonder if gun rights will shift more women from Democrat to Republican in the future.

“It’s more challenging for me to pick a politician that wants to take away guns or prohibit them in any way,” said JaQuan Taylor, a senior at Georgia Tech, in the story. She's also the president of the college group that advocates allowing campus carry. “I vote for the person more than the party, but I usually vote Democrat because they are pro-education. Since I’ve gotten a gun, I’ve begun to look at Republicans.”

Taylor sees it as a freedom issue, not a left-right matter.

“It seems like with the push for gay marriage, there is a push for freedom in all directions. That’s a good thing,” he said in the story.

Lynne Roberts, the Massachusetts state coordinator for the pro-gun Second Amendment Sisters, said in the story,“Women are voting typically on the Democratic side because over the last two or three generations self-defense and firearms were demonized. Women were told they can’t take care of themselves. That’s changing.”

In this story from nationalinterest.org, billionaire anti-gun activist and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety said all increases in recent gun ownership and concealed carry permits are driven by fear.

“The rate of American gun ownership has been in serious decline over the last 40 years, so it’s not surprising that gun manufacturers are desperately seeking to tap into new markets and that they’re using the politics of fear to drive new sales,” said Everytown spokesperson Andrei Berman.

For the full story from the The Daily Signal, go here.

Farmville—no, not the online game everyone was addicted to way back in the day—a town in North Carolina, is welcoming a different kind of gun shop. It’s being called a “gun boutique” in this story from wral.com, and the store at the corner of Main and Wilson streets opened last month with the goal of alleviating the intimidation factor many women face when going into a “normal” gun shop.

A recently released Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) study shows the number of concealed carry permits in the U.S. has surged by 215%.

The number of permits held nationwide surpasses 14.5 million, which means “6.06% of the total adult population has a permit.”

According to CPRC, there was an increase of 1.73 million concealed permits in 2015 alone. This was 100,000 greater than the previous record of 163,000, set in 2014...