Annie Oakley offered to raise and train a regiment of women sharpshooters for U.S. military service during World War I.
In September 1917, following the United States' entry into World War I, Annie Oakley made a public offer to the U.S. government to organize and personally train a regiment of women volunteer sharpshooters willing to serve in combat roles if needed. Though the government ultimately declined the offer—reflecting the era's firm restrictions against women serving in combat—Oakley's proposal generated significant public attention and debate.
The offer built directly on her established reputation as America's foremost markswoman and her decades of public advocacy for women's participation in shooting sports. Oakley had long argued that women could and should be trained in self-defense and marksmanship, both for practical safety and as a matter of capability equal to men, positions that were progressive relative to prevailing social attitudes of the time.
While never realized in the form she envisioned, the proposal is historically significant as an early, concrete articulation of women's potential military utility in marksmanship roles, decades before women's formal integration into U.S. combat-adjacent military occupations. Instead, Oakley redirected her wartime energies toward extensive charitable exhibition shooting for army training camps and fundraising events, using her fame to support the war effort in ways the government did accept, reinforcing her long-standing image as a patriotic public figure willing to serve her country in whatever capacity was permitted.