At the Women’s Only Handgun Workshop in Fairbanks, Alaska

I learned to shoot. Revolvers and semiautomatics, Glocks and Smith & Wessons and SMPs and Rugers. The first time I had ever spent any length of time around guns.

I was twenty-four, transported to Fairbanks a year and a half earlier for an MFA in creative writing. I had signed up for the class after hitting a wall in my research for my thesis—a Soviet-inspired science-fantasy novel with a large military component—and found that I was completely unable to write battle scenes without having some idea of the mechanics of how guns worked. After seeing the class—the “Women’s Only Handgun Workshop”—advertised on Facebook, I signed up. The Alaska Hunter Education program seemed reputable. Sixty-five dollars and two evenings of skipping Elementary Russian to solve the battle scene problem; time and money well spent.

The class was six hours over the course of two nights, run out of the Alaska Fish and Game shooting range. Inside, seven women sat at desks in the classroom across from the indoor rifle range. A bag that said women on target with an NRA logo leaned against each seat. Inside were a pair of orange foam earplugs, a pair of plastic eye-protection glasses, a small key chain with an NRA flashlight, and a book titled NRA Guide: Basics of Pistol Shooting. On the wall of the classroom was a banner with the three rules of gun safety, emblazoned in yellow.

Coming into the class wearing my two-winter-old boots and coat, cortisol racing through my bloodstream at even the sight of guns in the parking lot, I questioned the wisdom of my decision. I had no business being here. At a shooting range, surrounded by people holding guns, firing from behind the bulletproof glass that separated the range from the check-in desk. I didn’t see a reason for owning guns; poor gun control laws and unchecked gun ownerships clearly lay at the root of so much unnecessary violence in American society that had only grown worse during my adult life. Anyone who still believed in the Second Amendment was seriously deluding themselves as to the efficacy of a few well-armed militia members against the modern U.S. military and billions of dollars of defense spending.

Four instructors led the class: a husband-and-wife team named Larry and Alex, specially transported up from Anchorage for the occasion; an older woman with an ash-gray mullet named Rhonda, who moonlighted as the Alaskan Over Fifty Women’s Revolver Standing Bull’s-eye Champion; and a soft-spoken exmarine named Tom, who worked at the range. The class was mostly white women. I was easily the youngest. As Larry and Alex made introductions, they asked each of us why we were there.

“My dad and brother always got to shoot guns, but I never did. I think it’s my time now,” said Alice, who had gone to high school with Alex in Anchorage thirty years before. One woman was the proud mother of a newborn baby; her husband signed her up for the class to get her out of the house, then bought her a handgun as a present. Three white-haired retirees sitting together in a far corner liked to hike and blueberry pick in the summer but were worried about bears. Sitting next to me was Kara, a divorcée from California, who was just as nervous as I was.

“I want to learn for protection, since I’m alone now.” She was worried about her nine-year-old son finding her gun at home.

When Alex finally came to me, I gave my answer. “I’m writing a book. I’ve never been around guns. I don’t know anything.” I’d never considered using guns for protection, much less for protection from other people. I was shocked that everyone else in the class did. For bears, there was bear spray. For living by myself, or walking through downtown Fairbanks, there were locks and screaming and basic safety precautions. I had never considered surpassing...