Pretty Gun Gear

I am just now starting to really like some of the efforts to market more feminine gun accessories.

For years, the extent of actual gun gear related to women was having something come in pink. Pink is fine. Plenty of women like pink, and it’s great that their market is served. But when I see pink guns, I think of how much my 6-year-old niece would like it.

I have never liked pink. When I was a girl, my preference was purple. As an adult, it’s all shades of brown and shiny like rose gold – which another company just released to the market recently.

But when I saw this pop up on Jacqueline Janes’s Facebook page, I fell in love.

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This is beautiful, and feminine, without a trace of pink.

It’s almost like men in the industry are starting to realize that adult women probably shouldn’t be exclusively marketed to like 10-year-old girls. Or, maybe women have finally taken over enough spots in the shooting world that they could now voice their opinions that the novel pink offerings are cute and all, but they aren’t really attractive. (In the case of the pretty fleur-de-lis hand guard, it’s a woman-owned company from the looks of it.) It’s nice to really start to see more variety in the pretty gun gear market.

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15 thoughts on “Pretty Gun Gear”

  1. I’m a guy and I’m tempted by that. If they had a celtic knot version I’d be out a few hundred bucks.

    1. That’s the nice thing about making products for more mature audiences, the craftsmanship and art are more likely to appeal to both men and women, even though this specific design is a little more feminine.

  2. I’m remembering when Lionel made pink electric train sets for girls. They are great collectors items, but marketing-wise I’m pretty sure they were a bust, appealing only to the fathers of girls, who were wishing for sons. I suspect the same is true for pink youth rifles, etc.

    1. I suspect that fathers of girls who are quite blessed to have girls and also indulge them in a pink youth rifle would be offended by your assumptions about them really wanting boys. I know plenty of male gun owners who are truly wrapped around the fingers of their little princesses without ever having wished they were really boys.

      I actually have no complaint about pink guns. There are women who love pink, and I’m thrilled that their market is well-served. It’s just nice to have some other options as well. The only issues I’ve ever had with pink are the gun sellers who presume that just because I’m a woman, I like pink.

      2. I’ve always been fascinated by a certain Hello Kitty rifle, although I generally don’t like Hello Kitty. I liked how the pink and white complimented each other, and I also liked the picture of Hello Kitty with a rifle on the rifle itself.

        It also helps that, in addition to being made for the creator’s wife (and he knew exactly what she wanted :-) it was also made as a political statement against California’s Evil Black Rifle laws.

        The Hello Kitty rifle has also been a certain inspiration to me: I have since wondered what other color schemes could be used for the rifle, or even styles, that would make a rifle more attractive to a given person. I’ve seen a wood and copper-plated AR-15, for example, and I think a rifle painted in my high school colors (green and gold) or my college colors* (purple and gold) would probably be interesting. Adding a school logo would probably cause anti-gun heads to explode, too. :-)

        (*) By an odd coincidence, both my undergraduate and my graduate colors were purple and gold, despite my decision to travel about 2500 miles to go to graduate school…

  3. My wife’s been after be to build her a light weight AR and get it pained in a snow leopard print.

  4. Thank you so much for the write up and to everyone for the comments! OffHand Gear is owned by myself, a woman shooter designing producs for women shooters! While designed with us ladies in mind in looks, my bigger issue is our shape and needs – again thank you so much!
    Sandi
    Owner / OffHand Gear

  5. That float-tube may be slightly feminine – or it may just be 17th Century 3-Musketeers style. France and Italy wwere pretty gnarly back then, and later even in the 19th Century a man with a gun engraved like that wouldn’t have gotten a second look for masculinity, only for high-style.

    1. i don’t even understand why the binary of utilitarian would be “feminine”. i like it and think that it’s simply decorative, akin to the elegant handguard of a rapier that one might run through some villain’s guts.

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