Carrying a firearm is a big responsibility. Everyone needs to live up to that responsibility, too, and not just when it comes to drawing and firing your gun. Just carrying it is important, up to and including how you carry.
When it comes to that, I'm not a huge fan of off-body carry for a number of reasons, though most of that is probably more a matter of my paranoia than anything legitimate. I'd still prefer someone carry off-body than not carry at all.
And for many women, there are challenges involved in carrying concealed on the body. Women's clothes aren't usually maximized for it, and while there are ways around that, many women make their decisions based on what they have, what they know, and so on.
I get it.
So long as they hold onto their gun, my opinions one way or another are generally irrelevant. It's just when they don't hold onto it we have an issue, and that seems to be part of what happened in a Big Lots store outside of Atlanta.
A gun accidentally discharged at a Big Lots store on Monday afternoon, injuring two people.
Covington police said it happened around 1:20 p.m. while a customer was checking out at the store on Hwy 278.
Police said the customer dropped her purse, picked it up and placed it on the counter. When she picked it up again, police said her gun fell out of the purse and went off when it hit the floor
The round hit the woman in the ankle, then apparently ricocheted and hit her cousin.
Yes, it's weird all around.
Now, I have questions here. First, what kind of gun was this?
If it was a Sig P320, then we may have the culprit.
Seriously, though, the problem here is that while the gun was in the purse, it doesn't seem it was secured in any way. Georgia law requires guns to be in a holster, for one thing, which is meant to keep the trigger from being pulled by accident, but that wouldn't stop it from going off if it hit the ground and wasn't truly drop safe for some reason.
But if a gun is in the purse, it needs to be secure. Care needs to be taken to make sure it can't fall out. That includes specialty-made purses for concealed carry, but could at least be great care taken to make sure it's not in a position to fall.
None of that seems to have been the case, and the woman shot not just herself but also injured a relative. That's got to make family gatherings more awkward going forward.
"You could help me with the dishes, Susan!"
"You could have not shot me, Debbie!"
I mean, Susan wins, in my opinion.
Carrying concealed is a right, but it comes with a responsibility. The onus is on us to live up to it, because someone will try to use this story to attack concealed carry as a general thing, and we all know it, and that's the least of the issues with this kind of thing.
I'm just glad that the injuries aren't serious.
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