“Scared, and Doing It Anyway” — Farrah’s Story

Picture Farrah’s first day on the range. Her partner Wayne, who has been around firearms his whole life, had brought her along. She was the only woman there. The blokes showed her how to stand, how to hold, where to put her finger. And when it came time to shoot, her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She remembers telling herself to stop, over and over, and her body simply refusing.

“My body overran my mind. I was completely intimidated by it.”

She went back anyway. The more she did it, the more the fear turned into something else: a buzz, that scary-exciting feeling that makes you want a little more. Farrah had spent the better part of a decade running meditation classes and empowerment workshops. Pushing past the thing you’re afraid of was already her whole philosophy. Now she was living it at a firing line.

“It was completely out of the ordinary for me to go and do something like this. But it changed my life. Completely changed my life.” — Farrah

Girls with Guns didn’t begin as a business plan. Farrah started posting her range days on her personal Facebook, and her friends kept commenting: I’d love to do that. Where did you do that? So she started bringing them. Weekly shooting nights grew and grew, until the regulars at the range started joking, “You’re back with all your people.”

It was Wayne who named the gap. Plenty of women wanted to try shooting and had no easy way in. So Farrah asked her local club whether she could run a women’s come-and-try day. They said yes. It booked out straight away.

Posting a firearms event to the public was its own act of courage. Farrah put it on the local community noticeboard, pressed post, and braced herself for the backlash. It never came. Instead the comments filled with women tagging their friends, their sisters, their mums and their aunties. We’ve got to do this. It sold out in 24 hours, and a waitlist followed. It still happens every time. In Albury–Wodonga the session sold out within a day with another 40 women waiting, so Farrah rang the club and booked a second one.

Around 80 per cent of the women who walk through the gate have never touched a firearm. The rest are often rifle-licence holders who have hunted with their husbands and want a go on a pistol. The day is built to settle nerves before it raises the stakes: a .22 rifle on the bench first, with no kick, then a .22 pistol, then a 9mm to finish with a bit of bang. Women shoot in small groups of about four with an instructor, so nobody who comes alone ends up standing alone.

The reasons they come are as varied as the women. Bucket lists. Mums with daughters who have been counting down to their twelfth birthday, the minimum age, so they can finally come along. A woman who arrived in her day-spa clothes because her daughter told her that’s where they were going for her birthday. A whole session booked out for one woman’s 40th. A former Paralympic archer who came in her wheelchair looking for a new sport, and booked in for her licence on the spot.

Everyone takes their target home. Plenty tell Farrah they’re heading straight to Officeworks to laminate it.

After every session, Farrah and the instructors go for a drink and say the same thing. Women walk in shy, nervous and quiet. By the end they’re buzzing, crowding around each other’s targets, saying look what you did.

“It’s not even about the shooting. You can see the change in these women. You see it physically.” — Farrah

Farrah didn’t feel out of place on her own first day, but she understands why so many women do. The feedback is the same at every event: they want to try, but walking into a club full of men puts them off, especially mums who want to bring a teenage daughter. Girls with Guns still has male instructors, but the room is full of women who are all nervous and all doing it for the first time together.

Her sister instructs alongside her, and she got the job with no warning. At the very first session, with six women booked, Farrah turned to her and said, “You’re going to be helping instruct today.” It built her confidence too. Neither of them is far from being a beginner, and Farrah reckons that’s exactly the point.

“We know exactly how they feel, because we were there.” — Farrah

The meditation years show up on the firing line more than you’d expect. When people are scared, they stop breathing, so Farrah’s most repeated instruction is simply to breathe. Relax the body, quiet the mind, and don’t overthink the shot. She visualises the hit before she takes it. When a teenage girl freezes and says she isn’t doing it, the ask is gentle: just try one. One almost always becomes another, and then another.

Farrah’s own discipline is IPSC, the fast, run-and-gun action pistol sport she picked up at monthly club days. Then Wayne booked Farrah and her sister into a competition. Not a local one. A Level 3 international IPSC match in Hungary, shot with an AR, a rifle neither of them could train with in Australia.

They arrived to rifles they had barely touched. In the safety area they had to ask how to load them and where the safety was. The field was about 80 per cent men. One competitor asked if it was their first international comp and looked visibly worried when they said it was their first comp of any kind. Their goal was simply not to get disqualified. Thirteen stages later, after kicking down doors, crossing bridges, shooting through windows and sharing one gun between them, they hadn’t picked up a single DQ. Then, at the awards, Farrah heard her own name called for a medal.

“We can do anything now. We’ve done a level three international comp, with an AR we didn’t even know how to use.” — Farrah

One moment from a session has stayed with Farrah more than any other. A woman shooting with her sister said she couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled, and now she couldn’t stop. She said she felt it like a switch. Wayne, who has been in the sport for decades, says the same thing: he doesn’t know what it is about shooting, but it changes lives. It’s a leveller, too. Age, size, fitness and ability don’t matter. It’s you, the firearm and the target.

Ten years ago, Farrah says, she was painfully shy. She couldn’t speak in front of people, and she was sure she wasn’t confident enough to teach her own meditation classes. Then someone asked her a question she has never forgotten: when will you be confident enough? How do you even measure that? There’s no course that hands it to you. So one day she simply decided to choose confidence, and to say yes to the things that scared her. Doors opened everywhere. She still runs her empowerment page, Empowerment HQ, alongside Girls with Guns. And before Girls with Guns existed, it was already on her vision board, logo and all, with three words written beside it: Leap. Just do it.

“You’re never going to be ready. So just jump. Just leap.” — Farrah

On what it means to be a woman in the gun world, Farrah lands on one word: honoured. It is a male-dominated space, and there aren’t many women leading in it yet. She sees herself as one of a growing number of cheerleaders bringing more women in, each doing their own little bit.

What’s next? Girls with Guns has run events at around ten ranges across Victoria, went interstate to Adelaide in July, and Tasmania is asking. The ripple effect is already showing at the clubs. In Wayne’s firearm safety courses, women used to make up five to ten per cent of the class and are now close to half. Husbands keep asking, a little jealously, whether there’s a boys’ session. Farrah’s big dream is a Girls with Guns range of its own and then one in every state, with ongoing coaching, teams, competitions, and workshops that blend shooting skills with self-belief. Right now the team comes in for a session and leaves again. She wants to be the support women keep coming back to.

Farrah, thank you for flying the flag and giving women a safe place to try something that can look terrifying from the outside, and to walk away with a real skill. If our community can ever help yours, we’re here.