Is Purse Carry A Good Method For Women CCW?
A GUN PURSE IS NOT THE BEST METHOD FOR A WOMAN CCW
By Nancy Thorne
Men are extremely lucky when it comes to concealed carry. They just need to choose a gun that best fits their hand and shooting style and a holster and a belt and that’s it, they are set. Women? That is a different story. Women have so many different clothing options to navigate-pants, dresses, skirts, shorts, T-shirts, long sleeve shirts, skinny strap shirts, V-necks, scoop necks, turtle necks….you see what I mean.
On-body carry can be very complicated for a woman. There are ten methods of carry for a woman depending on the type of outfits she wears most. Most women will need to have 2 or 3 carry types they use which means double or triple the number of holsters, guns and careful consideration of the type of clothing they wear.
- Inside the Waistband
- Belly Band Holsters
- Ankle holsters
- Thigh holsters
- Camisole with built in holster
- Compression type shorts with built in holster
- Thunderwear (underwear with a strap that carries the gun near the crotch)
- Garter holster
- Bra holsters
- Concealed carry purse
While most carry methods are on-body, sometimes, there is no on-body option. If you are out for the evening at a semi-formal affair and wearing a strapless short evening dress, where is your gun going to fit? Ankle? Thigh? Bra? Waist? No,no,no,no. In this case, a woman often turns to a gun purse.
Cha-Ching! On a limited budget, a woman has to choose carefully. Why not just use a gun purse everyday and be done with it?
- Not that attractive and little storage room. For most women, a purse is an accessory often chosen for its’ aesthetics as well as for its function. Unfortunately most gun purses for carry are not actually all that attractive and aside from the ability to carry your gun, they don’t have a lot of room for other purse contents.
- Not that comfortable. When I shop for a regular everyday purse, one of the first thing I look for is how comfortable is it to carry. Now, there a wide variety of styles of regular purses from shoulder straps, hand clutch, cross body straps etc. Additionally, purses can be made from different materials. While some gun purses can be shoulder strap left or right, most are cross body straps, which is an awkward way to carry a purse.
Some gun purses have reinforced straps, which do relieve the strain on the shoulder somewhat. You have to remember that you are carrying a gun plus all of the other things that women typically carry in your purse like a wallet, cosmetics, phone etc. That can make the purse fairly heavy.
- Off body carry. This makes most women nervous. You have to carry your purse everywhere you go. You cannot leave it anywhere that your children might find it ie: On a counter top, next to you on a car seat, in the shopping cart etc. This means that you need to be extra vigilant not to let your purse out of your sight or control-even for a minute.
- Slower draw. In the event that you would ever need to draw your weapon, how fast could you access your firearm in the purse and draw it from the holster in the gun pocket? It just seems like there are a lot of extra steps involved than with on body carry. First you need to open your purse, then access your gun pocket and unsecure the gun from it’s holster in order to draw it out. By that time, I would be afraid that an attacker would have already overpowered me. Perhaps after repeated practice, you could get the process down fairly quickly.
While a gun purse should certainly be one of your concealed carry methods, it should not be your only method of carry. When shopping for a gun purse, be sure to look for the size of the purse pockets to be sure they will accommodate your gun, the length of the zippers to make ease of gun draw better and a high quality holster inside the gun purse pocket.
