Class Teaches Moms To Carry Baby And Gun At Same Time

A community class in Iowa is offering gun-carrying moms lessons on how to safely tote their bundle of joy and a loaded gun simultaneously.

The class for moms (and dads) is run by a mom and gun owner Melody Laurer, who told her local ABC affiliate in an interview that she saw the need and decided to provide a service to address it.

“We have seen a huge insurgence in young mothers, mothers of young children, wanting to get into firearms,” the gun-carrying mom told ABC6 in an exclusive interview. “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.”

One basic piece of advice she offers to gun-carrying parents: hold your gun and your baby on opposite sides of your body.

Although the reaction to the news of the class has varied, many online commentators share the sentiment that guns and babies don’t exactly mix.

“I don’t hate guns, I just think that guns and children should not be handled at the same time,” commented one woman who identified herself as BHLaurie on ABC6’s website.

Laurer’s class is not billed as an advocacy vehicle to create more gun-toting moms, but simply a response to what she says she saw happening in her daily life. A mom herself who has worked at a gun store and a parenting center at the same time, she said that she started to encounter a lot of parents who felt the need to carry a concealed weapon to protect their children.

But buying a weapon in a store doesn’t automatically come with gun safety classes, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Springboarding off of her job at Crossroads Shooting Sports in Des Moines, Lauer started a class to teach gun-toting moms safety basics and know-how for protecting their little ones and preventing accidents. The response to the unusual offering has been so huge that it’s been impossible to meet the demand.

“To our knowledge, nobody is doing this yet,” said Barry Snesll, who runs Crossroads Shooting Sports, to ABC6. “The interest was so great that she actually had to turn off or shut off the registration.”

Snesll said that had they left the registration open, two or three times more people would have signed up for the class than there was room for.

Gun safety for parents has been in the news recently, as Houston saw a spate of accidental shootings. According to Houston’s ABC13, there were three accidental shootings of children in the span of just four short days.

For the gun-carrying moms in Iowa who take Laurer’s class, at least they will be a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of safety.

[Image via CollegeDrinkingPrevention.gov]