Ladies: guns on your person NOT in your purse

-Revolvers are too dangerous for EDC 

-Handbags should never be used to carry a gun

Female gun owners are the fastest-growing demographic in the retail firearm industry. Year over year more women are licensed to carry guns and take personal responsibility for their own protection. After all, in a free society we are accountable for our own safety. But to keep those freedoms we must behave responsibly and with firearms safety is our primary obligation.


Recently there have been high-profile incidents involving toddlers or young children obtaining loaded firearms from a mom or relative's purse and accidentally discharging it, resulting in injury or loss of life.


The accidental shooting of Justin Reynolds and Monique Villescas by their 3-year-old toddler on February 1, 2015 illustrates the importance of women gun owners carrying firearms on their persons not in their handbags. Luckily the bullet that struck Reynolds and Villescas was not fatal for either. Not so, however, for Veronica Rutledge; a young mother accidentally shot and killed by her two-year-old son who removed and fired his mother's loaded gun from her purse.


As an advocate of freedom and personal liberty it is difficult to tell gun owners what they should and should not do with their personal firearms. Unless, of course, that gun owner, or segment of gun owners, is endangering themselves or others.


The gun community needs to self police more than any other politically active group. All gun owners, including those who buy a gun only to let it collect dust, have a duty to defend the Second Amendment from protectionist radicals by demonstrating that criminals, not legal gun owners, are responsible for unlawful gun deaths.


It is time, as a community, we put our collective feet down and encourage our armed daughters, sisters, and mothers to, one, avoid revolvers that cannot be simultaneously “safed” and loaded, and, two, carry your gun in a quality holster on your body not in your handbag.

Whether at home or staying away from home I follow a set protocol when "disarming" or separating myself from my carry pistol:

1. Remove pistol from holster pointing in a safe direction (by “safe direction” I mean property, not people, would be damaged if I were to negligently press the trigger).
   
2. Eject the magazine.
   
3. Eject the top off round, ensure the chamber is empty.
   
4. Reinsert the magazine and place the pistol and top off round well out of reach from young hands but not inaccessible in an emergency.
   

This protocol may be too “safety Sally” for some yet inadequate for others but it works, whether you're a man or woman, and is far more effective than leaving a handbag with a loaded “reliable” revolver assessable to a curious child.


I am not a "revolver hater." The first gun I fired, under the supervision of my father, was my dad's Model 10 Smith and Wesson .38. To this day I enjoy shooting and am fascinated by the mechanics and precision engineering of quality "wheel guns." As a legally armed citizen, however, a revolver is the last carry option I would consider.