Robyn Sandoval is the founder, president, and CEO of A Girl & A Gun. Sandoval, formerly a staunch anti-gunner, travelled a long road to get to where she is now. This interview was conducted through my participation in the Voices of the Second Amendment — made possible by Beretta Holding.
This interview was recorded on April 17, and the conference she teased has already happened. Next year’s national conference will be held April 27 – May 2, 2027 in Grand Junction, Colorado.
John Petrolino: I’m here with Robyn Sandoval. We are at the NRA Annual Meeting 2026 brought to you by Beretta (Holding), for the Voices of the Second Amendment. Robyn is a training extraordinaire. She is a businesswoman. She is an entrepreneur. She’s a good friend, and she’s also an inspiration. Robyn, welcome. How are you today?
Robyn Sandoval: I’m good. How are you doing?
JP: I’m fantastic. So tell everyone who is Robyn, where did you come from? Where did you grow? Tell me all of it.
RS: Oh, gosh, well, my name is Robyn Sandoval. I’m just another gun girl, another woman on the range. I’m a mom, and I’m fortunate that I get to live my best life.
I have the best job in the world. I run an organization called A Girl & a Gun. We’re the largest women’s organization in the country. We have 34,000 members, and I get to watch women just thrive on the range, learning how to shoot from that brand new shooter. Help her find her first gun, help her be successful with it all the way up to our pro shooters.
We run the only all ladies three-gun match in the country. So I get to see everybody compete at the highest levels and everything in between. It’s just, I have the best job in the world.
JP: How did this happen? Were you just born into a gun family, or did you become a gun mommy? How did this go down?
RS: No, I was very anti gun. Actually, I was vocally anti gun for most of my life. Even though I grew up in Dallas, my parents were California transplants, so guns were not part of our family. We did not have guns in our home, for sure.
And it wasn’t until I saw the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when I saw a modern American city debilitated, and everyone was just devastated, thinking, how can this happen? We are not in a third-world country. We are in America. How can this be this way? And you realize how vulnerable our infrastructure is.
I saw this mother at the Superdome that had small children with her, and she handed her children to strangers getting on a bus to Houston, and she said, “Please take them. I’ll try to find you in a few days.” And I couldn’t imagine being that desperate.
I thought, What do I have to do so that’s never me? I thought, I’m gonna store peanut butter and tuna fish and we’re gonna hunker down. That is our emergency action plan. That’s (what) my plan was. We’re just gonna hunker down no matter what happens. And my husband said, “If someone breaks in our door to take what we’ve saved, how am I gonna stop them?” And after arguing for gun control my whole life, I had no argument, and it came down to: Okay, I will learn how to use a gun, how to not be afraid of it. I will let a gun in my home, which was a huge step with three kids. I didn’t even want in our house.
I have literally lived the entire journey from start, all the way through. And so it’s really awesome, because I’m able to talk to women at whatever phase of that journey they’re in and understand where they are and help them see where there is fun and empowerment and confidence and everything on the other side.
JP: You’re in Texas, and Texas has a very particular gun culture and things like that. Talk to me a little about Texas. Is this like the hardcore blue state or red state? Where are you at? Talk to me about all the things Texas.
RS: Well, I live in Austin, so I’m the blue dot in the middle of what normally is a red state, but it is increasingly purple, as we have so many transplants coming from California and historically, Texas was always the stereotype. We think of Pee-wee Herman at the Alamo. It always had this kind of cowboy mentality, but that really wasn’t the way for Texas (and) guns.
It’s only been recently that we’ve actually been able to lower the cost of getting a permit or a license to carry and even have constitutional carry now, but there were incredible fees. There was required training. There’s always been these stop gaps that people have always thought that Texas was this big gun culture, and really our laws have always proven that wasn’t really the case. It’s just a stereotype from the movies from the old John Wayne days that people have that thought about Texas. And I’m glad to see that we finally are getting more of those freedoms.
JP: You have challenges that, you know, they’re not the same as, say, challenges that I have in New Jersey, or, you know, maybe Charlie has in Massachusetts, but your challenges are still there. And, restrictions on carry, because there’s even weird places you can and you can’t take your firearms still, right?
RS: Yeah.
JP: And your sensitive locations laws…
RS: We have signage you have to follow. You have to know what the signs are. You have to know where you can’t carry. You have to know the “51% rules” and all of those things. You do have to be an educated gun owner, and so that’s why the LTC classes are really great, because it does let you learn what the laws are.
In terms of shooting training, that’s why A Girl & A Gun exists. I would much rather people not go to state-mandated training and choose to come to instructors that are qualified and credentialed and passionate about teaching, rather than some of our states that I see their state-mandated training, and the stuff that they cover is not adequate. Or, whenever you have state-mandated anything, it’s never fun or engaging. I would love for gun owners out there to know all of the options and the fun activities and the really quality training that’s available (from) the training community
JP: Do you guys have anything coming up that you’re excited about this year, next year, anything in general that you want to kind of talk about?
RS: I always have things coming up that I’m excited about. In two weeks, we have our national conference, so we’ll have 700 women training at Grand Junction, Colorado. That’s always fun.
(At our conferences) we do shooting from the ground, shooting the helicopter, pistols, rifle, shotguns. We do everything. Defense. Competition. Literally, if you think it we have it. Archery, ground fighting, knife fighting, knife maintenance, like everything across the gamut. That’s always a lot of fun. We’ll have 700 students out there for that.
This year is the year of the rifle and so we’re bringing more women into rifle shooting, helping them find a passion for the AR-15, and helping our instructors go home ready to teach it.
JP: Perfect. Is there anything that I left on the table that you want to get out? Do you have a final message for people that might be, you know, watching or reading anything we produce tonight,
RS: if (you’re) a woman, or have a woman in (your) life that loves to train and loves to hang out with awesome women, then go to AGirlAndAGun.org and find a chapter near you.
JP: Okay, perfect, Robyn. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time, and this has been a tremendous pleasure to have you today.
RS: Thank you very much.