Brits aren't known for their love of firearms. In fact, we tend to hate them. When it comes to American gun culture, the majority of us look on with a mixture of horror and confusion when we see a Second Amendment activist walking through an airport with a rifle strapped to them. To many of us, it all seems so vulgar.

But in the wilderness of West Virginia, I recently found myself learning how to shoot an AR-15 alongside friends. There's an exception to every rule, and I am apparently the exception to the rule that all Brits hate guns. Guns transcend the lines of nationality and gender.

One of my colonial friends in the wilderness troupe was a woman. Although rates of female firearm ownership in the United States are on the rise, there's a gender gap in gun ownership. A recently released Harvard/Northeastern survey found that, while a third of men described themselves as gun owners, only 12 percent of women did. Like their cousins across the Atlantic, American women simply don't support gun rights as much as men.

Is their skepticism warranted? It's partially the result of a gun culture that emphasizes masculinity. It's also the result of a failure to articulate the argument that lower rates of female firearm ownership and so-called "common sense" gun control measures are hurting women.

The conventional liberal says that high rates of gun ownership hurt women because the presence of a firearm in a woman's home apparently increases the odds that she will be a homicide victim. Gun control advocates seized on a recent report titled "When Men Murder Women," which found that just more than 600 women were murdered by men wielding guns in 2014, many of them in situations of domestic violence. The Huffington Post's Melissa Jeltsen drew attention to the contention that "during that same time period, there were only 15 instances of women using firearms to kill a man in self-defense," but any mention of non-fatal defensive uses or deterrence effects was conspicuously absent.

Shoddy statistics, overconfidence, and flawed arguments dominate the gun control debate, and the area of gun-related domestic violence is no exception. The anti-gun narrative around domestic violence reflects wider issues with the arguments for gun control: It downplays defensive uses, ignores the evidence that guns deter crime, and fails to account for the distinct possibility of reverse causation. Rather than the mere presence of firearms in a household increasing the likelihood of men murdering women, it is plausible that violent men are simply more likely to purchase guns.

Oft-cited research on the causes of femicide in abusive relationships found that, after controlling for incident-level variables, male abusers' general access to a firearm made no significant difference to the risk of death for female victims in domestic violence incidents. Regardless, federal law already bars a person convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence involving intentional force from owning a gun.

Gender disparity in defensive gun uses is a good argument for encouraging greater female gun ownership. What gun control advocates tend to miss is that most "household" firearms are, in practice, owned by men. Supporting female firearm ownership on an individual level, rather than in the context of a "household" firearm, is a valuable way of reducing violence against women. John Lott, a law professor at the University of Chicago, has conducted research suggesting that "murder rates decline when either sex carries more guns, but the effect is especially pronounced when women are considered separately."

As the old saying goes, guns are the great equalizer. Just ask Lee Ann Delauter or Bettie Ann Newton, who used guns in self-defense during domestic violence incidents.

Reducing choice for gun owners disproportionately punishes women. Vice President Joe Biden demonstrated the ignorance of those who advocate "common sense" approaches to "assault weapons" when he advised a woman concerned about effectively protecting her home that, "You don't need an AR-15. It's harder to aim. It's harder to use...Buy a shotgun." I might have grown up in gun-hating Britain but it doesn't take a firearms expert to know that, unlike shotguns, AR-15s are light, accurate, and produce less recoil.

It's also important to apply the idea of intersectionality when examining the problems of gun control. For various reasons, sex workers (who are mostly women) and trans women are often unable to count on police protection against violence. Individual gun ownership can help fill that void. Unable to parse the idea that members of marginalized groups might benefit from the right to defend themselves, gun control advocates patronizingly dismiss pro-gun LGBT women as nothing more than ignorant shills for the gun lobby.

Gun control advocates also appeal to many other groups besides women. People of color and the wider LGBT community are wrongly treated as homogenous anti-gun voter blocs, with organizations like the Huey P. Newton Gun Club and The Pink Pistols often being sidelined in the mainstream debate.

Just as gun control hurts ethnic minorities, gun control hurts women. While those who wish to use the power of the state to restrict gun ownership should reexamine their own positions, defenders of the Second Amendment could bolster their arguments by placing a renewed emphasis on how gun rights benefit different groups in different ways.

Daniel Pryor is the media relations associate at Students for Liberty. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.