“I was not a gun owner,” she told Insider Online during a short conversation at the 34th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference in Phoenix last month. “I didn’t believe people should be gun owners.”

That changed in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when she watched news footage of a woman handing her children to a stranger, asking that person to take care of them and she would try to meet them a few days later. Sandoval said at that moment, after years of arguing for gun control, “I had no argument.”

She purchased a handgun. As the mother of three youngsters, she decided, “At the end of the day those three people are my responsibility and I will do whatever it takes to protect them.”

“So, I became a gun owner,” she said. Still, she was worried it would “come out of the safe…so I wanted to learn how not to be afraid of it.” Sandoval went to a local firearms instructor, Julianna Crowder, to learn.

“She was starting a ‘Girls Night Out’ at the local range,” Sandoval recalled. “She was forming a new group, A Girl and A Gun. She helped me learn not to be afraid of it.”

She spent months training, mentoring, competing and becoming an instructor. Today, Sandoval has partnered with Crowder and A Girl and A Gun now has championed a “Girls Night Out” at 192 gun ranges in 48 states. There are about 6,500 members across the country that meet and train, shoot recreationally and even compete.