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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.15 101 kentuckycenter.org vous, I tell him. My gun will blow up. "You'll be all right. It won't blow up." He manages to say this as though he is not talking to a crazy person. It helps. I push the Wile E. Coyote thing from my mind, pull on my ear protection and wait. "Treat!" Jenkins yells. Everyone starts shooting. Oh, yeah, that was the signal. I fre. Five times. All of my bullets. My face is intact. My gun is intact. My target sufers fve little holes, three in the center circle. Oh, man. I rock. Later, I look at Renee Watts' target — Renee Watts of the pink combat boots, pink shirt and black hoodie with a big pink fower on it. Renee with the eyeliner and styled hair. Tat Renee. Tere is a big hole in the center of her target. Almost all of the bullets from her 9 mm Glock hit dead center. I defate slightly. Aim more, I tell myself. "I'm obviously a huge proponent of armed citizens," Jenkins tells me. Particularly, armed ladies. "Ladies are usually the target of violence. Tis may save her life one day or save the lives of her family." Jenkins is not the only person to make this point about women and violence. Ken Pagano, the former pastor, tells me about a woman in his Women on Target class whose son was shot in front of her during a home invasion. "She was [in class] because she wanted to learn about frearms and not be a victim any- more. Tis was a time of healing for her. She shot her frst magazine of ammunition and she literally broke down in tears," Pagano says. But statistics say women are at a lower risk of violent crime than men, and if you're talking about violent crime committed by strangers, the risk is lower yet. Te most prominent danger to women seems to be one that no concealed-carry permit will prevent. An analysis that looked at murders from 1980 to 2008 showed that women were six times more likely than men to be killed by an intimate. And even men are killed far more often by friends than strangers. I ask as many gun owners as I can if they have ever been the victim of a violent crime. Tonight, at the Ladies Shoot, I meet one: Jenni- fer Allen, 36, of Shepherdsville. A tarnished gold medallion hangs from Allen's neck. It reads "Steady as we go," a line from a favorite Dave Matthews song. Below the medallion, a bit of lace camisole peeks out from under her black shirt, the lace a nice contrast to her frayed camoufage cap. Allen slips out of her jacket, pulls up the black shirt, and indi- cates a spot on her back. Just beneath the fesh I feel the hard mass of a bullet. It has been there for 11 years, resting less than a fnger's width from a lung. It was October 2004, about 10 p.m., and Allen, four months pregnant, was waiting for friends to arrive. She was in her pajamas, listen- ing to Delilah After Dark on the radio. Her two daughters were sound asleep down the hall in the family's ranch home on Blue Lick Road. Her husband was traveling for work, putting up cell phone towers all over Kentucky and Indiana. Within days of his departure, the phone calls started, every day, several times a day. Te caller said nothing, just breathed. At frst Allen dismissed the calls as a prank, but as they continued, she grew uneasy. She began keeping a record, noting the time of each call. Tonight friends would stay with her and the girls. Te day before, they'd brought her a gun for protection. Allen is a little hard of hearing, and so when she heard her friends tugging at her door, she fgured she'd simply not heard them knock. She got up to let them in. Still, just to be on the safe side, she picked up the gun and carried it on her palm. "Like somebody was going to hand me something," she says. She undid the deadbolt and was unfastening the chain when a man in a hoodie and facemask crashed through the door and hit her in the face. She fell to the foor and dropped the gun. It slid across the foor to her assailant, who picked it up as she jumped back to her feet and began fghting. He grabbed the straps of her top, but