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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/business/content/business/epaper/2006/07/19/a1d_gunbag_0719.html
Gun-toting is in fashion
By Pat Beall
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Forced to draw a bead on a bad guy? May as well do it in style.
Pinellas County-based Philip Clements Group LLC is selling a $295 custom-designed purse with a hidden gun compartment for pistol packin' mamas.
"The first one was sold in Palm Beach," said Patricia Plunkett, vice president of the firm. Discreet zippers allow the carrier to carry a gun — or passports, or jewelry — and pull it from either the left or the right side of the bag's hidden compartment.
Over the past 10 years, the number of Palm Beach County's concealed weapon permits has grown faster than the area's mushrooming population. Boca Raton philanthropist Christine Lynn has one. Socialite Nina Otto does too. Even U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, packs heat, although she's not saying where. "I have a legal concealed carry permit, and it's called concealed for a reason," she said.
About 50,000 women in Florida are authorized to carry concealed firearms, according to 2004 state records. Permits remain controversial. For instance, this year state lawmakers were criticized for shutting down public access to the records.
But it's what happens after the permit is issued — concealing the weapon — that has created headaches for women and opportunities for Plunkett and other retailers.
Leather holsters are too bulky to hide a gun beneath form-fitting clothes, and harnesses are designed for a man's body. "A man can always wear a Tommy Bahama shirt over a holster," said Joe Rice, manager of Delray Shooting Center Inc. "Unfortunately, the manner in which women dress requires them to carry smaller guns."
National manufacturers are scrambling to fill the market niche, offering everything from daily organizers with an area for a revolver — or an automatic — to a briefcase with hidden gun compartment to fanny packs to an $89.95 soft-side briefcase with a zippered side opening which "makes drawing very quick and easy." (Available only in black.)
Chuck Papp, manager of the Palm Lake Shooting Center in Lake Worth, said these "gun bags" haven't generated much local interest from steadily growing number of Palm Beach County women in the market for a firearm.
"They don't always like the design," he said. "A lot of women just use what they've got, and put the holster in their purse."
As a result, women here continue to purchase small guns, the better to tuck them into small, fashionable carrying spaces: this year's popular Ralph Lauren calfskin bikini bag, say, or any one of a series of Michael Kors' tiny clutches that were hot on fashion runways this spring.
For beginning shooters, though, these small guns can be a bad buy. "When women go, 'Ooh, that gun is so cute,' we try to teach them that (the small guns) are definitely not for novices," said Rice. They are less accurate. They pack a wallop of a recoil, rendering them even less likely to hit a target.
Bigger handbags aren't necessarily a gun-tote solution, either, adds Plunkett, especially for those already prone to rummaging through their bag for a lipstick. "Although you may be very organized when you leave the house at 8 in the morning, at some point later in the day, nothing in that bag is going to be where it was intended," she said.
The 58-year-old businesswoman said she went through holsters, a shoulder harness — "I usually threw it in the glove compartment by the end of the day" — and successive handbags before she and designer Philip Clements put their heads together last year and came up with the Patricia Day Bag: a $295 leather and jute coupling of fashion and firepower.
The materials and Spanish workmanship give the bags a designer sheen, she said, and the price tag makes it a bargain compared with Kors and Lauren. But much of the attraction is the unseen component.
Sales have been brisk enough to warrant designing a second bag, said Plunkett, though the roughly one-year lag time between design and production means a second handbag style probably won't be available soon. The current handbag style is limited.
And given the purpose of the purse, it could be retired early: In a crisis, said Plunkett, "You are not going to bother taking that firearm out. You are just going to pull the trigger and ruin the handbag."
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Gun-toting is in fashion
By Pat Beall
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Forced to draw a bead on a bad guy? May as well do it in style.
Pinellas County-based Philip Clements Group LLC is selling a $295 custom-designed purse with a hidden gun compartment for pistol packin' mamas.
"The first one was sold in Palm Beach," said Patricia Plunkett, vice president of the firm. Discreet zippers allow the carrier to carry a gun — or passports, or jewelry — and pull it from either the left or the right side of the bag's hidden compartment.
Over the past 10 years, the number of Palm Beach County's concealed weapon permits has grown faster than the area's mushrooming population. Boca Raton philanthropist Christine Lynn has one. Socialite Nina Otto does too. Even U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, packs heat, although she's not saying where. "I have a legal concealed carry permit, and it's called concealed for a reason," she said.
About 50,000 women in Florida are authorized to carry concealed firearms, according to 2004 state records. Permits remain controversial. For instance, this year state lawmakers were criticized for shutting down public access to the records.
But it's what happens after the permit is issued — concealing the weapon — that has created headaches for women and opportunities for Plunkett and other retailers.
Leather holsters are too bulky to hide a gun beneath form-fitting clothes, and harnesses are designed for a man's body. "A man can always wear a Tommy Bahama shirt over a holster," said Joe Rice, manager of Delray Shooting Center Inc. "Unfortunately, the manner in which women dress requires them to carry smaller guns."
National manufacturers are scrambling to fill the market niche, offering everything from daily organizers with an area for a revolver — or an automatic — to a briefcase with hidden gun compartment to fanny packs to an $89.95 soft-side briefcase with a zippered side opening which "makes drawing very quick and easy." (Available only in black.)
Chuck Papp, manager of the Palm Lake Shooting Center in Lake Worth, said these "gun bags" haven't generated much local interest from steadily growing number of Palm Beach County women in the market for a firearm.
"They don't always like the design," he said. "A lot of women just use what they've got, and put the holster in their purse."
As a result, women here continue to purchase small guns, the better to tuck them into small, fashionable carrying spaces: this year's popular Ralph Lauren calfskin bikini bag, say, or any one of a series of Michael Kors' tiny clutches that were hot on fashion runways this spring.
For beginning shooters, though, these small guns can be a bad buy. "When women go, 'Ooh, that gun is so cute,' we try to teach them that (the small guns) are definitely not for novices," said Rice. They are less accurate. They pack a wallop of a recoil, rendering them even less likely to hit a target.
Bigger handbags aren't necessarily a gun-tote solution, either, adds Plunkett, especially for those already prone to rummaging through their bag for a lipstick. "Although you may be very organized when you leave the house at 8 in the morning, at some point later in the day, nothing in that bag is going to be where it was intended," she said.
The 58-year-old businesswoman said she went through holsters, a shoulder harness — "I usually threw it in the glove compartment by the end of the day" — and successive handbags before she and designer Philip Clements put their heads together last year and came up with the Patricia Day Bag: a $295 leather and jute coupling of fashion and firepower.
The materials and Spanish workmanship give the bags a designer sheen, she said, and the price tag makes it a bargain compared with Kors and Lauren. But much of the attraction is the unseen component.
Sales have been brisk enough to warrant designing a second bag, said Plunkett, though the roughly one-year lag time between design and production means a second handbag style probably won't be available soon. The current handbag style is limited.
And given the purpose of the purse, it could be retired early: In a crisis, said Plunkett, "You are not going to bother taking that firearm out. You are just going to pull the trigger and ruin the handbag."
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I prefer it tucked away under her direct control all the time. As many times as she has locked her keys in the truck, I can see her leaving her purse some where by accident. Not good.
