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.