Iowa woman’s gun class focuses on carrying concealed with children
(CNN) – Babies crying. It’s not the sound you’d expect out of a gun range.
After all, the rule we hear often is guns and babies don’t mix. But for some that’s not so simple.
Melody Lauer, a mother and gun instructor says, “If you’re a mother, and if you’re an armed mother, they have to. You have no choice.”
Melody Lauer is a mom who packs heat. She’s an expert in two entirely different worlds. “I was actually working at both a gun store and a parenting center at the same time.”
When she realized it’s what people refused to talk about, carrying a gun and a baby, that was going to cause some big problems.
“We have seen a huge insurgence in young mothers, mothers of young children, wanting to get into firearms. And what’s happening is we don’t have instructors that are addressing their needs. So they just do it. They don’t do it right and then they end up having an accident.”
So as a firearm instructor and parenting expert, she’s going where no one has really gone before. She’s not trying to convince parents that they should carry a gun. She’s simply encouraging them to do it safely, if they do choose to.
By teaching a class on how to baby-carry with a concealed weapon.
“If you have baby on one side, it’s best to have gun on the other side.”
Barry Snell from Crossroads Shooting Sports says, “To our knowledge, nobody is doing this yet. The interest was so great that she actually had to turn off or shut off the registration. Otherwise, we would have had two, three times as many people here.”
These parents say it’s what they’ve been looking for.
Student Eric Tull says, “When we first had Margaret, and I just had this overwhelming desire, that I need to protect this child. And it’s really made me take it a lot more seriously.”
Lauer says, surrounded by holsters and baby toys, what she’s doing feels right. “That makes me feel a little bit more better, that we’ve had at least a few more people that are less likely to have accidents because I’ve helped them along that way.”
This is certainly not your ordinary firearms instructions class. However, there does seem to be some demand for this kind of offering. Many people will say simply that guns and babies are two things that should be as far apart from one another as possible. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always work that way.
We know from all the information being collected that females are the largest growing demographic in the firearms industry. More women are getting involved in firearms and CCW than ever before. So it is natural, that with a new segment of this culture, that new challenges would arise. One of these challenges involve guns and childcare.
If the instructor, Melody Lauer, feels confident that she has developed a trainable strategy that will help female gun owners better handle a firearm while also handling a baby or small child, then other mothers should certainly pay attention. There has been, sadly, a number of tragedies lately involving both females and small children.
As the demographic of female shooters continue to grow, we will see additional challenges that the industry and culture will need to adapt to. The first order of business seems to be finding adequate conceal carry devices for women, along with a safe method for females to carry and draw from with these new devices.
