As NRA Women readers are no doubt aware, the year 2021 marks the NRA’s 150th anniversary. That’s 150 years of marksmanship training, shooting competitions and Second Amendment advocacy, spanning generations of women who shoot and hunt, and it’s a tradition of which we should all be proud.
Precisely stated, those 150 years did include some decades in which women couldn’t vote or otherwise make our wishes known. That’s why, in honor of this 150-year milestone, we here at NRA Women are announcing some big changes for the future.
Right off the bat, we’d like to point out that, up until now, the best way to tell if a gun was designed for a woman or not was to look at what color it was. Black-and-blued was for men, while pink was for women. We don’t recall ever having been consulted about this color scheme. Some women do enjoy the color pink, we suppose, but it’s certainly not the best color for a woman’s gun. So what is?
In fact, you need look no further than our masthead to learn the proper color to denote a woman’s firearm: teal. There are many reasons for this, from the aesthetic, to the practical, to the metaphorical, and we feel strongly that once you read them, you’ll agree that all guns marketed to women ought to wear this shade.
Long-time shooters know that, of all the colors in the visible spectrum, the easiest one to see is green. That’s why many folks who mount laser sighting systems on their guns will use green lasers, just in case they need to shoot during daylight. Red just doesn’t show up as well under bright light. Teal is really just an extra-pretty green, while pink is a washed-out red. If you want to be able to find your gun in a crowded gun safe, it should be teal.
Furthermore, teal is on a very short list of universally flattering colors. All women, regardless of skin, eye and hair color, look terrific in teal. That means that if you’re trying to coordinate your outfit with your gun—which is totally the most important thing to women who shoot, don’t you know—teal’s the way to go.
Other reasons to topple the Pink Gun Hegemony abound. The truth of the matter is that although women are more likely to be small of stature than men, there are lots of guys out there under 5’9” (the industry “standard size” to which they design their guns’ proportions). It’s unfortunate that so many of the compact firearms that would have been just right for them are coated in Man Repellent (e.g., “pink”).
On the other hand, teal just doesn’t seem to make men feel less manly. Perhaps it’s because there’s a lot of blue in teal; perhaps it’s because men don’t see colors as well as women do, and therefore they think that it’s green. Changing the default color from pink to teal will certainly level the playing field for all of us.
Lastly, we’d like to make note of the fact that pink, historically, wasn’t a feminine color at all. Up until the beginning of the 20th century, in fact, it was fairly common to dress baby boys in pink and girls in blue. If we’re going to use color to denote who the gun is for, we should remember that future generations might get confused about which color is for whom.
Some people may disagree that teal should be on all firearms marketed to women for the next 150 years. Some people reading these words may be outraged. To those people we say: Pink has had its time in the spotlight, and now it’s time for that spotlight to be a green light. To those people we say: The tide of history has turned, and that turned tide is teal. To those people we say: Read the first letter of each paragraph in this article.
