Gun Control Reform Activism

flamin lib

(14,559 posts) Wed Feb 10, 2016, 10:54 AM Feb 2016

Gun-Friendly Purses Put the Women Who Wear Them At Risk

Among the military-grade home defense guns and combat gear on display at the annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, last month, the new Blue Studded Tote from Illinois-based apparel shop Gun Tote’N Mamas stood out. The dusty blue satchel, made from textured American cowhide leather, costs $199.95 and features a trait not found in department store handbags: special padding to prevent gun imprinting. The product is part of what’s become a burgeoning retail category. Along with gun-friendly purses, there are now enough thigh, corset and garter holsters and pistol-porting sports bras on the market to fill entire concealed carry fashion shows.
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At a Walmart in Hayden, Idaho, in December 2014, Veronica Jean Rutledge, a 29-year-old nuclear research scientist and concealed carry permit holder, was killed when her 2-year-old son reached into her purse, grabbed her loaded 9mm Smith & Wesson semi-automatic handgun, and fired. Rutledge’s bag, made by Gun Tote’N Mamas, had a zipped front compartment designed specifically for a handgun, but her curious toddler was able to unzip it. A scan of recent news items reveals that several toddlers have been just as dexterous: In Pennsylvania in 2013, a 2-year-old boy got his stepfather’s gun out of his mother’s purse and shot himself in the face. In February of this year, Pamela Gillilan, a security officer with a firearms license, was shot in the leg with a handgun her 3-year-old son found in her bag. “I should’ve never left the gun in my purse like that! I never do!” she was quoted as saying in a police report.
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Both of those hypotheticals (“The purse could be dropped and the gun might go off”) have in fact happened. In a Starbucks in Florida two years ago, Pamela Beck’s purse dropped to the floor and “hit the ground hard,” police said, causing her fully-loaded .25 caliber semi-automatic handgun to fire. Her friend was hit in the knee. Beck, who did not have a license to carry concealed, said the gun, which her father had given her, sat at the bottom of her purse for a year; she forgot it was there. A couple of months later in St. Louis, a 7-year-old girl was shot in the leg when her mother’s purse fell to the floor, setting off a Cobra .38-caliber handgun. At a resort in Panama City, Fla., last year, a 19-year-old woman was unpacking when her duffel bag dropped to the concrete, causing her two-shot 9mm Cobra Derringer pistol to fire, hitting her in the leg.
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“Holsters that don’t adequately protect the trigger from both sides are begging for a negligent discharge in an age where so many are carrying firearms without external safeties,” Owens wrote in his Bearing Arms post, citing the case of a 55-year-old woman who fatally shot herself in the eye while adjusting her bra holster. That same holster was showcased at the Fayetteville fashion show.

http://www.thetrace.org/2016/02/concealed-carry-purses-put-women-at-risk/

Despite the marketing push for women to own guns for self protection the ownership rate among women since 1980 has remained constant at 9-14%. Perhaps women have more common sense than the NRA gives them credit for.

What has changed, no doubt due to that marketing, is that more of that 9-14% are packing their guns with them.

Because most of the popular concealed carry pistols have no mechanical safety to prevent accidental discharge (something that would trigger a government recall in ANY OTHER CONSUMER PRODUCT) they are prone to firing at the most inopportune times, like when adjusting your bra holster. In fact this happens so often there is an industry name for it, Glock Leg Syndrome. Google it.

All the evidence points to guns making a situation more dangerous, particularly for women, yet the gun industry pushes ownership by everybody, trained or not, and everywhere.