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Question of the Day: Off-Body Carry?

Robert Farago - comments No comments

“A week ago, four-year-old Yanelly Zoller was staying at her grandparents’ home in Florida when she reached into her grandmother’s purse looking for candy, but instead found a gun,” dailymail.co.uk reports. “Yanelly, known to her family as ‘Nelly,’ accidentally pulled the trigger, shooting herself to death.” As you’d expect . . .

gun control advocates are exploiting Ms. Zoller’s death to promote civilian disarmament. On the pro-gun side of the equation this tragic incident doesn’t change the view that the government has no business infringing on the keeping and bearing of arms. Safe storage laws? Nope.

But if we set aside the idea of government intervention in how and where Americans keep or bear arms, we’re still left with a question: is off-body carry acceptable? What about women who wear clothes that won’t conceal a firearm? Should they not carry, change their clothing or off-body carry vigilantly?

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Robert Farago

Robert Farago is the former publisher of The Truth About Guns (TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns.

0 thoughts on “Question of the Day: Off-Body Carry?”

  1. If you’re regularly around children, teach them to keep their grubby little fingers off your purse. There are likely all manner of things there that can hurt them. If you are *not* regularly around children, keep your eye on the sneaky little monsters when you are.

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    • ” If you are *not* regularly around children, keep your eye on the sneaky little monsters when you are.”

      There’s a *very* valid point there. You can be comfortable with how you train your kids. You have *zero* input on the training of other’s little drunken mistakes.

      Frankly, I don’t have enough extra pairs of eyes to cover all of them.

      Yikes. ;O (H’mm. That’s supposed to be a google-eyed open-mouth of horror emoticon. I blame those damn kids that probably invented them…)

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  2. I live in WaPo country (N. Virginia), and I can assure you that they don’t call it Pravda-on-the-Potomac for nothing. I troll the Post (got to know what the enemy is up to), and I’ve come to the conclusion that no lie is too low for them to use to advance WaPo’s liberal-progressive-Marxist agenda. Except for the sports, all WaPo articles have an overarching socialist slant. It’s difficult to believe that when it was founded, the Post was a conservative newspaper for which John Philip Sousa wrote a march. That patriot would now spurn the Post and what it has become.

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  3. If a woman is going to carry in her purse, you’re unlikely to convince her not to. In Florida during the hotter months (March through November) most women are not going to wear clothing conducive to carrying anything bigger than a sub-compact .380, if even that. An attempt to convince her to carry on-body instead of in-purse is more likely to result in her not carrying at all.

    The best result I could come up with is to convince her to carry in her purse with NO round in the chamber. Yes, I understand the sayings we throw around, “if you won’t carry chambered, then don’t at all”, yes I have seen the videos of people who have been shot by a bad guy while racking their slide, etc. But if she’s going to carry in the purse, make it unchambered. That four year old isn’t going to rack that slide properly and disable the safety in 99% of cases. Most six year olds probably can’t even do that.

    If I woman absolutely MUST carry in her purse, then it might as well be unchambered. Reaching for it is going be blind, so you don’t know if something has tripped the safety, you don’t know if something is stuck in the trigger well, you don’t know if something has fallen into the barrel, etc.

    Of course, there are the concealed carry purses, but you have the same original problem, that kids can find it.

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  4. the 3 rifles i BUILT run better than the one i BOUGHT

    and for what i got the BUILT ones were less expensive than the BOUGHT one

    the ones i BUILT routinely shoot as good as other rifles i see at the range out to 300 yards that were BOUGHT for 2-3x as much

    so are we supposed to stop handloading too…and sharpening our own knives…

    are we going to have to start taking our rifles to the gunsmith for routine cleaning

    if you BUILT IT you know how to FIX IT

    thats way more important if we are indeed trusting our very lives and the lives of our families to these rifles

    in a shtf scenario there isnt time to take it to the gunsmith or send it back to the factory if it stops working

    google ar-15 recalls…daniel defense…ruger…armalite…smith and wesson…

    i can build TWO rifles with optics that shoot as good out to 300 yards for what i can buy ONE daniel defense rifle for

    no thanks

    PS: nothing against clint but part of his businees plan is he BUILDS AND SELLS RIFLES FOR $2000-$3500…consider that fact before you put too much stock in what he says when he says dont build your own…just sayin…

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  5. Sounds like a man that makes (and is trying hard to sell) expensive rifles. Does it ever make sense to take the advice of a man with a vested interest?
    Would you take the advice of a used car salesman about how good a buy the car he’s pushing is? Probably not. Most would know enough to check it out themselves, or else take it to a mechanic that THEY pay for an UNBIASED opinion.
    Why is this any different?

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  6. I doubt she had a choice. Knowing how restrictive guns are for most people in that neck of the world. However, she put herself in a dangerous place with little or NO law and nothing to defend herself with.

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  7. A purse is a bag for carrying all the stuff women can’t seem to leave the house without. A gun is none of those things. A deadly weapon should be treated with respect and carried responsibly, on the body where you can keep control of it and access it quickly when you need it. Having it somewhere in a bag full of junk dangling from your arm is useless when someone grabs you from behind or snatches that purse and runs off.

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  8. Don’t ever trust your life to a gun or ammo that you haven’t thoroughly tested for reliability and (less importantly) accuracy. From my own not-trivial experience, low-cost and assembled AR’s (sub-$500) have been just as reliable as much more expensive ones. They haven’t, however, been as comfortable or as accurate.

    When it comes to optics, I’ve run some really good glass and some fairly low-priced glass. I’ve shot the hell out of a Primary Arms Red-dot and a 1-6 BDC scope, in good weather and foul, and never been let down. I wouldn’t trust my life to a no-name ‘tactical red dot’ from Amazon, but you don’t need to spend Aimpoint prices to get sturdy, usable glass.

    Clint Smith is a hell of an instructor and his character and credentials are above question. I just don’t agree with him on this point.

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  9. Side-hammers FTW!
    I’ve always been more of a traditionalist regarding my muzzle loaders but this beautiful opportunity to give the finger to gun bigots is awfully tempting.
    I’ll think about it.

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  10. Yep, now I just need a horse and a cart, then I’ll be set up for doing a drive by. The cops might even blame it on the Amish, cause they do so many drive bys.

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  11. He could have gone with “know what your money brought you”, sparing whole obnoxious guru exhibit.

    It is just too easy to point at the rack of 2000+$ ARs, 1500+$ bolt-actions, pat WC 1911 in your holster and sagely notice how good this stuff is. Wow, a revelation. Your cheap 4-pot-block compact can’t match pep and cornering of Ferrari. Talk about unbelievable.

    But few people use SKS or Rem 783 (ewww) etc. as their main gun, and don’t know all too well that quality weapons are different. It is just they are not different enough to justify upping the spending. Whatever peddlers say.

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  12. Just picked up My HG9sc and I Have to say I really like it , I Got mine at a really good Price so for me it was a No Brainer, and I own several fine weapons , I do like the Vets for Vets, that alone sold me , WE All Have stood our Watch for this Great Country , I applaud That and will Stand Shoulder to Shoulder with our Brothers in Arm regardless of Branch of Service , For that I Thank all of you , If Someone thinks they borrowed some design I suggest the really look this one over , someone will always say it looks like this or that This one is built really strong, from the Slide to the Chassie, Sorry some do not like it ,But I will always support My fellow Vets , as for the Cabela’s incident I wonder why the Sales person showed them at all? if that were the case , sounds like Customer Breakage to me, where I Got mine from there were 4 and once the price was known, all 4 were Gone, with mine being one of them , within an hour !!!, This is a solid Firearm , My Hope is that Gun Guys will Support this Company and what they stand for, Get this one for your collection !! I don’t think you’ll be Sorry , Happy Shooting and God Bless

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  13. But wait.. I thought the antis say the 2nd amendment only applies to muzzle loaders* anyway?

    oh, I must have missed the asterisk:

    *except where we say it doesn’t

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  14. This Hypocrite is a power hungry person that wants to take away a persons right because He says so, He Thinks so, he knows so and hes an asshole then he wonders why infringement of his right too say so is protected speech

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  15. CA resident. So the discussion is purely academic. Quail season starts next weekend. Normally I hunt with ear plugs. Not a very good solution. So now I have bought a pair of electronic muffs.

    We’ll see how that works.

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  16. I’m not seeing how they load it in the shell !? If there is a wad to check the expanding gases, then the slug is not turning in the barrel. When it exits the air imparts a spin in the direction of the rifling on the slug. If any of the gases blows by the slug in the barrel, it will impart a spin in the opposite direction. When it hits the air, it will want to spin the other way actually stopping it from spinning causing it to de-stabilize! Without knowing how it’s loaded, it is tough to analyze the problem. Also aluminum is way too hard a material to shoot threw a steel barrel without some type of patch around the slug, be it plastic, paper or soft metal to buffer it as it goes down.

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  17. If one is to have a technical discussion, it would help to use technically correct terminology. There is no such thing as a “sound level of 125 dB”. The sound level is measured in dBM, a very different meaning. Decibel is a relative measure, expressed on a logarithmic scale. Without getting into the definition of logarithms, picture it as a multiple, 2X, 3X, etc. Saying that a gunshot is 3X, for example, is meaningless. It needs to be referenced to something. The standard definition is referencing the measured sound level (pressure) to the threshold of hearing (0 dBM, or 20 micro Pascals of pressure). An important part of any proper measurement is taking account of the distance of the measuring microphone from the source, as sound pressure decreases rapidly with distance. The standard is 1 meter, hence dBM. It is important to note (or verify) this measurement distance, as otherwise the measurement is meaningless. Just like when car stereo manufacturers advertise 1,000 Watt amplifiers that are incapable of 20 Watt outputs. Suppressors are expensive items, beyond most people’s ability to try and throw away bad ones. It would be proper for such expensive items to be properly tested and specified, according to accepted industry standards. Please don’t misconstrue any of the above as a call for government regulation; quite the opposite – an educated consumer, demanding proper disclosure of specifications and test results, is what I’m advocating.

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  18. Lost: Four rounds of .40 FMJ. If you find it, run away screaming, then call the police.

    Laugh at the Aussies all you want, but they might be an accurate depiction of our future in another 20-30 years.

    Reply

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