If it’s happened to you, you know what I’m about to talk about. Hot brass in your bra. I am lucky and grateful that this has only happened to me twice, but it dawned on me when it happened the second time just a couple weeks ago, that this doesn’t get talked about during our training much. Now, I’ve certainly heard it brought up and it gets a good laugh when the instructor describes the reaction when the shooter realizes she’s got hot brass in her bra, and the conversation generally turns to changing your shooting attire to avoid this and moving on. Nothing about what to do when/if it does happen, despite your best efforts to fit yourself in the most protective clothing to avoid it.

It’s true, what you wear to the range does make a difference. High neck t-shirts, ball caps, avoiding shirts with collars - all these things certainly help. Maybe you’ve been told about this by someone in your circle, but maybe you haven’t and so you show up to your instruction or your range session not fully ‘covered’ - it happens, especially if you don’t know how unpredictable the ejected brass’ flight path can get! However, all these things in check, and I still ended up with an ejected casing right down the front of my shirt and given all the provisions I took in my clothing to keep that from happening, it was that much harder to get that little bugger out of my sports bra. So, I got to thinking about writing a post about how I handled this situation in an attempt to be safe and remain in control of the situation so that if it does happen to you for the first time and you are caught off guard, you have at least read through a way to react so you aren’t the instructor or range safety officer’s next funny story.

The thing the NRA drives home in every one of the courses I teach is to ALWAYS a) keep the gun pointed in a safe direction, b) keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot, and c) keep the gun unloaded until ready to use. But you are already on the range and already shooting when this unfortunate thing occurs, so what do you do? If you are a beginner shooter, your first reaction is likely going to be to take your non-dominant hand off the firearm and try to get the brass out of your bra. The problem with this is it usually results in you losing track of what you are doing with your dominant hand that is now the only hand on the firearm. Depending on how hot or how deep the brass has made its way, there could be some arm flailing, some foot movement or other involuntary reactions that are unsafe when on a live range, even if you have the place to yourself.

While we might not be able to completely prevent this from happening, despite our best preparation, we can try to have a planned reaction when it does. I’ll share what I did when this happened the second time that worked for me - hopefully it’s helpful for you too. The first thing I did is take my finger off the trigger of my firearm before doing anything else. Before I reacted to the brass, before I began moving my body to avoid the burn, before I did ANYTHING, because of those 3 safe handling rules, this is the one I can control most in this situation to make sure nothing unintended happens. Almost simultaneously, I rolled my shoulders forward. This did 2 things: it created a pocket of fabric in my sports bra for the brass to move into vs it being pressed up against my skin, and it also ensured that I continued to keep the muzzle of my firearm pointed down until I could place that firearm back on the table of my shooting lane. Then, I grabbed the bottom elastic of my sports bra through my shirt and pulled it away from my body to let the brass fall to the ground while leaning forward slightly so that brass didn’t end up in my waistband as it fell.

Hopefully, you can avoid ever needing the technique at all, but if you are a little more busty, end up at the range in less than the most suitable shirt on, or just plain unlucky, I hope this at least gives you something to try to safely handle this situation. If you have any other tips or tricks in this situation, please comment and share - I’d love to hear them.