Yikes.

The shooting occurred about 6:30 a.m. Thursday in the parking lot of a Horn Lake apartment complex as the deputy, Angela White, was getting out of her car.

The gun, which was inside her purse, fired and the bullet hit the deputy in the side. Investigators said she apparently dropped her purse and the gun fell out of the purse onto the pavement.

Evans says the scene was unsecured after the shooting, and by the time police arrived, the gun was missing.

This is the the third “self discharge” of a gun in purse leading to injury that I know of in 2013.

A woman at a Florida Starbucks dropped her purse in May and the .25 automatic that was in it went off, shooting her friend in the leg. Pretty much the same thing happened later in the month in St. Louis, where a 7-year-old ended up absorbing the bullet in a residential home.

On the upside there is no information in any of these stories that suggests that the purses in question were designed for concealed carry. That minor concession made, if these women were carrying guns on their bodies as they should have been, then these three guns wouldn’t have been in a position to negligently discharge.