Rick Ector is a firearms instructor based in Detroit who holds a free firearms training event for women once a year in order to provide them the basics of gun safety, shooting, and the use of a gun for self-defense.
He founded Legally Armed in Detroit (LAID), where he teaches concealed carry license classes and other firearms-focused classes when he is not doing the training seminar for women.
Breitbart News spoke to Ector Friday and he explained how getting robbed in his driveway after work one day made him rethink his personal safety, leading him to buy a pistol and get a concealed carry license. From there, he went on to become a firearms instructor. Then, 12 years ago, he said he saw a news story on television about a woman who was assaulted and killed, and he committed himself to holding his annual training seminar for women.
The same year he saw the story of the woman who died in that heinous attack he began holding his annual training event, which 50 women attended.
Ector said he was a little dismayed that only 50 women showed up but he stuck with it, year after year after year. In 2020, over 1,900 women attended the event.
He has now trained over 9,000 women in total at his events.
What does it cost for a woman to attend Ector’s annual event? Nothing. Ector told Breitbart News that he feared a price tag could make the event cost prohibitive for some of the women who actually need training the most.
He said, “The annual event allows women who are skittish about guns to face their fears–to take control of their fear–and learn the basics of using a handgun so they can have a new hobby or learn a new tool for personal safety, or both.”
Ector added, “The overwhelming, prevailing majority of women who attend the event enjoy it and come away with a new hobby and they want to learn more.”
Because Ector offers the event for free each year, we asked how he does it. How does he get the guns necessary for nearly 2,000 women to use? How does he get the ammunition?
He said one individual loaned him guns to use in the early years, when the number of women in attendance was small enough as to be manageable at one shooting range. Now that the event has grown to encompass two shooting ranges, Ector says he uses guns from the same individual on one range and the second range allows the women to use its guns as they go through the event.
As for ammunition, Ector said he has been blessed to be able to acquire ammunition via help from supporters who believe in the program. A Michigan firearms advocacy group covered ammunition for him during the 2023 training event.
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AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.