When it comes to female shooters, I believe that many companies in the firearms industry are listening and trying. I really think they are. Many organizations are doing their best to make sure that women feel included instead of overlooked, left out or ignored. But every once in a while, those efforts can backfire. And a female friend of mine recently told me a story about just that.
Apparently my friend (who happens to be an accomplished shooter and a Second Amendment advocate) was walking by a company’s booth at a large industry trade show. This particular company manufactures and sells suppressor wraps or covers, something she was genuinely interested in. (If you’ve ever shot a suppressed gun, you probably know very well that a suppressor gets very hot, and touching it will burn you and perhaps melt nearby surfaces.) This company was showcasing their solution to that … and they had a clever tool on hand to demonstrate the effectiveness of their product. That item was a curling iron.
My friend was glancing at the products in this company’s booth when a gentleman caught sight of her and said, “Hey, I bet YOU would understand this problem, ma’am. Have you ever been ready to go out, but you can’t because your curling iron is too hot … and you can’t set it down without ruining the counter top?”
There was a long pause as my friend (in her words) “contemplated the cost/benefit balance of physical violence and rejected it; contemplated the cost/benefit balance of being gloriously rude and rejected it; and ultimately decided to be polite.”
She calmly replied, “No. I’ve never had that happen. But I HAVE had my gun get so hot that I couldn’t put it in the case without melting it.”
Oops.
There was another long pause as the booth worker realized that he may not have approached this situation in the best way.
As she and I contemplated the encounter a while later, we wondered if this company had gone a bit overboard with a marketing ploy to reach women. But hindsight and afterthought had us thinking differently. As my friend mentioned, “To be fair, they actually HAD a curling iron at the table to demonstrate the heat resistance of their suppressor cover. It was just the fact that his first comment, at a gun trade show, had nothing to do with guns and instead attempted to appeal to my beauty routine.”
She and I both had a good laugh about the scenario … after the fact. “Do I LOOK like I need a curling iron, anyway?” she retorted. (Mind you, this woman has fantastic, long, perfectly curly hair, all on her own!) The curling iron example was, overall, a good thought … and a pretty good try. But at that very moment, with this odd conundrum, they may have lost a new customer. Perhaps it just goes to show you: You should not judge a book by its cover. And you probably should not judge a woman by her suppressor cover, either!
