Mom Starts ‘Babywearing And Carrying’ Gun Safety Class
Guns and attachment parenting — what a combo. One mother is literally teaching parents how to babywear while carrying a gun.
Melody Lauer is a mom of three and a gun enthusiast. Her husband convinced her to get a gun when she was 21 because she was traveling alone a lot for work. She agreed, and went about it very responsibly by getting professional training before she got it. She told Yahoo, ”I knew that just having a gun wasn’t the equivalent of knowing how to use it, of course.”
Lauer became a gun enthusiast. She was hired by a shooting range she frequented to do sales. She got her instructor credentials through the NRA. She moved to Virginia and started working at a gun store and at the same time picked up a job doing administrative work at an attachment parenting center that taught childbirth, babywearing, and breastfeeding classes. It was there she realized that guns and attachment parenting weren’t mutually exclusive — and she wants to spread the word: ”I’ve coslept with my babies, I’ve been wearing my babies, I’ve loved them, and I’ve worn a gun the whole time.” Hmm. I hope she doesn’t mean that literally. Oh wait, she does.
The class name, “Babywearing and Carrying” is not a play on words. She actually instructs people how to safely carry while babywearing. She says, “If you have baby on one side, it’s best to have gun on the other side.” Wow. Thanks for that bit of genius.
Lauer is also teaching mothers how to safely have a gun in the house. She told Yahoo that most of her class deals with safety tips, “including to never carry guns in bags or keep them in drawers but always use a holster ”” and to understand that simply having a gun won’t make you safer.” She says, ”I always caution people if they are carrying a gun to feel safe, then they are carrying it for the wrong reason.” Lauer was inspired to start teaching the class after she heard the story of the two-year-old Iowa boy who took the handgun that was in his mother’s purse and shot her dead while they were shopping at Walmart.
Gun safety education is great, especially since we live in a society that allows people to buy deadly weapons without the need to prove that they know how to use them. In many states you don’t even need to register your firearm or have a license to buy one. But is telling people not to keep their gun in a drawer and advising them if they are wearing their baby to holster their gun “on the other side” really something that is going to keep anyone safer? “Keeping it holstered” isn’t a fail-safe for accidents — as evidenced by the four-year-old Alaska boy who was shot when his mom’s gun fell out of her holster.
The students in her class cited an overwhelming need to protect their child as a reason for owning a gun. Maybe someone should teach a statistics course then, that will prove to parents once and for all that having a gun in the house does not make your child safer — quite the opposite.
(photo: Facebook)
