You’ve probably never heard of Randi Rogers, and if you saw her at practice, you might 
run the other way before you had the chance to introduce yourself. Randi’s a good role model and a hard worker who spends her time juggling school, work, competition, and all the normal demands on a 23-year-old. She’s also the US Practical Shooting Association’s Ladies National Champion and she’s a spot-on shot with a handgun.
Randi appeared on my radar recently because Glock–maker of “Safe Action Pistols”–approached us about placing an advertisement in Women’s Adventure magazine and the ad we’ve got in our fall issue puts Randi’s role model status front-and-center.
What’s the problem, you ask? While everyone at WAM appreciates the Constitution and our right to bear arms, half of the WAM staff is, for lack of a better phrase, gun shy. And we all worry about the impact the ad might have on our readers. We generally stay away from politically-charged issues and violence isn’t something we’d waste many pages on either.
The other half of us argue that what Randi’s doing, and what Glock’s supporting isn’t violent at all. “Practical Shooting” is what Randi’s excelling at and it’s the extremest and most dynamic of the shooting sports. She’s a skilled athlete who runs, negotiate obstacles, reloads and has earner national-champion status. Is it such a big deal that she does it using a lightweight, automatic, 45-caliber handgun?
Our biggest worry is that you, our readers, will be split about the issue, too. We’ve featured cowgirls and women race-car drivers, female soldiers and skirt-wearing Ironmen. But where does holster-wearing Randi fit into the ideal of a woman adventurer?
