You'll Love It, It's Pink!

[Dr. Girlfriend]

Firearms Aficionados -

I would like to use this excellent public forum to share an irritating pattern common to ranges and gun shops.

I happen to be a young woman with an LTCF, a Khar MK-9, a nice variety of holsters, and the wherewithal to protect myself should the need someday arise.

I am also part of a small niche market for firearms manufacturers, who wish to market to women like me. Kindly, they have taken to affixing pink ribbons and grips to their smaller, lighter, and more concealable pistols, cheaper and less intimidating long guns, and various firearms ephemera.

I'm sure the marketing department believes this will make the products more approachable, and perhaps attract my attention. I think they also hope to feminize the firearm a bit, so I might think of it more as an accessory than as a vital piece of equipment to my self-defense.

I also realize that gun shop employees probably have these guns in their showcases a long time before they're sold, and are looking for ways to move inventory.

However, the end result of this occurs when I come to the counter to examine a potential purchase. No matter what I've asked to see from the showcase, I'm always offered something pink. I've heard this come out of the mouth of every gun store employee I've ever done business with.

I hope you'll all understand when I say that I feel a little insulted each time this happens. To me and, I hope, to most women who carry or shoot, a firearm is not an accessory. It's a tool, and a vital one. I care more about caliber, weight, size, accuracy, reliability - the list goes on - than I do about color. And baby pink really isn't a good color, in my opinion, for a serious tool.

To the shop owners, employees, and perhaps a manufacturer or marketer if I'm lucky - if you've received this message I'm sending into the void -

I'll buy more things from you, come to your store more often, and shoot at your range if I feel more comfortable in your place of business. Treat me like all the rest of your customers. Size me up, talk shop with me. Pull something out of the case for me to see if you think I'll like it.

Making or selling pink firearms isn't helping me feel at home. It's helping me feel apart.

I wonder what you all have to say about this. Have you ever purchased a pink gun? If you have, what did you think about it? Was the gun a gift? How'd that go over? If you're male, how do you feel about this? Shop owners and employees - do these guns sell? Who's buying them? Are you taught to market them to the women who come in your store?

I can't be the only person out in the interwebz who has an opinion on this. I'm eager to hear what folks think.

Thanks for the forum to air my grievances, at the very least.

[capitolcop]

Nowhere...no time...has gender ever been a consideration in my gun thoughts or dealings. You either is or you ain't and obviously you is!!!

[Signmaker]

Few years back, I showed my girlfriend a pink...something in a gun rag. She took a look at it, and proclaimed "that's $%#@ing retarded, guns should be blued, black, or stainless!".

Yeah, she likes her 6" blued S&W revolver just fine.

[The_War_Wagon]

If I owned a gun shop, I'd NEVER stock anything pink. Special order, consignment, transfer - sure. But I'd never ORDER it!

[Gun]

1911's have nothing to do with pink, unless you put on pink grips.

Stick with those (without the pink grips!).

[TheF00L]

Doc G:

I will only interject 2 comments into/about your wonderful rant:

1- You missed the part that when you go into the gun store with a male friend (if this is ever the case) and they look through you as if you do not exist. It is obvious that the man of the duo would be the only one shopping for a gun.

I remember watching a "Bones" episode once when Angela Montenegro was being ignored at an airline counter. She whipped up/open her top and flashed the counter-person her boobs to get his/her attention.

My wife.........well, nevermind.

a firearm is not an accessory. It's a tool, and a vital one. I care more about caliber, weight, size, accuracy, reliability - the list goes on - than I do about color. And baby pink really isn't a good color, in my opinion, for a serious tool.

2 - A famous person once said:
I look to a day when guns will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by their caliber, weight, size, accuracy, reliability

[heili]

I am also part of a small niche market for firearms manufacturers, who wish to market to women like me. Kindly, they have taken to affixing pink ribbons and grips to their smaller, lighter, and more concealable pistols, cheaper and less intimidating long guns, and various firearms ephemera.

Everything sports related for women has pink ribbons all over it. Thanks Susan G. Komen. I hate pink. I avoid pink. I will by men's items whenever possible to avoid the damn pink. Pink on the golf gloves, pink socks, pink athletic shoes, pink back packs, pink fucking pinkitypink. Makes me think of Pepto Bismol. What comes to mind then? Puking and the squirts. EW.

I can't be the only person out in the interwebz who has an opinion on this. I'm eager to hear what folks think.

Definitely you are not the only person with an opinion about this, nor are you the only female who doesn't want everything to be pink. Welcome to the club. We don't have meetings or a club house or anything, but if we did it wouldn't be pink.

[streaker69]

I'm guessing this isn't the thread to be making a joke about being in the kitchen making sammiches?

[The_War_Wagon]

I will defend to the death however, the right to rock with PINK Floyd!





Oh by the way - which one's, "Pink?"

[GunLawyer001]

If you worked in a pet shop, and 99% of the shoppers had cats or dogs, and one day a cow owner comes in, wouldn't you blow the dust off the cow bell that you've had for the last 5 years and see if maybe they want it? Even if they came in asking for hoof ointment or cow magnets?

It's like that.

I expect that if I went into the embroidery aisle of some craft store, and they had some NASCAR pattern, that they'd try and sell that to me.

I wouldn't take it personally. You should use the opportunity to firmly and confidently request a very specific product for a very specific reason. Right after they say "now, this is called a 'revolver', would you like to hear how a revolver works?", you respond with "I'm just not getting enough foot pounds of energy at the muzzle with my current Desert Eagle in .357, what do you have that's more lethal than that without being classified as an NFA DD?"

I'm thinking they will put the pink purse guns away.