On any given day, there are an infinite number of objects you might find in a woman's bra, besides her breasts. Maybe a credit card, some folded-up cash, or a tampon; a tube of lipstick if she's feeling fancy. Because of the never-ending, one-sided battle between women's clothing and functional pockets, the bra has over the years become a repository for the small, important items women want with them at all times.

4 Things Conservatives Get Right About Guns If you care about gun violence, here's what you need to know.

Which is why the bra of 42-year-old pharmacist Lola often contains a gun. To be specific, a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm. Less than one inch thick, the $449 Shield is a matte black semi-automatic double-action pistol with an eight-round magazine (plus the ability to have a ninth bullet in the chamber).

Lola carries in every place it's legal to do so, whether that's in her bra or in a waist holster—which, in her home state of Florida, is just about everywhere except courthouses, schools, government buildings, airports, career centers, and post offices. And it's her preference for the Flashbang Bra Holster that first caught my attention: Under her Internet nom de plume, "Lola Strange," Lola stars in an instructional (and delightful) YouTube video about her holster of choice. In the video, Lola says that one reason she—along with her husband, Hank—loves the Flashbang holster is that it offers a little "lift" in the cleavage department. "I can always use a lift."

For most of her life, Lola believed "guns were just something you saw on TV, and it was always the bad guys who had them." But three years ago, Hank took an interest in learning how to use a gun for self-defense, and he encouraged his wife (and two teenage sons) to do the same. Today Lola never leaves the house without her Smith & Wesson. "Having a gun alone isn't going to save your life," she says. "But at least that gun gives you the opportunity to have some kind of equal ground with whoever."

I'll say what Lola won't. A gun isn't just a weapon—it's also an unambiguous way to signal to someone that they should fuck off and leave you alone. And if you're a woman in need of an unambiguous way to signal that someone should fuck off and leave you alone, history, data, and the plain old common sense that comes from living in the world suggest that someone is probably a man.

A Woman in Arms Jamie Haswell | Fort Worth, TX | Owns a Taurus 9mm pistol and a Sig 238-.380 pistol

“I keep one in my nightstand in a locked box with code access, and one on my person at most times. Different states have different carrying laws, but when legally permitted, I carry one in my purse. I may carry it in my car as well. If I am going to a large event, I would prefer to have it on me, and if I’m going somewhere that is not considered ‘the safest area,’ I like to have it on me there as well.”

I didn't grow up around guns; as an adult, I've never liked them. I get nervous around them. But I have a distinct feeling that any fascination I ever had with guns—any faint arousal I'd felt as a teenager watching the hyper-violent action sequences of The Matrix or Angelina Jolie, all pouty lips and short shorts, double-fisting pistols in Tomb Raider—disappeared one night in my early twenties. That's when a particularly volatile boyfriend showed me a short, grainy video of him, taken the summer before, brandishing a chunky silver handgun a little too zealously. Waving it around, cocking it gleefully like a John Woo protagonist.

I remember squeezing my eyes shut, jerking away; something about the image of my boyfriend with a gun in his hand tripped an alarm. We'd been arguing lately, even as we'd started making plans for where we'd live when college was over—and a few times, instead of bickering back at me, he'd just grown silent and loomed. An uneasy thought unfurled: Did I trust this guy I loved, this guy who knew the key code to my apartment and knew where to find me at any given hour, with a gun? Did I want to build my future around someone who looked so turned on by the weapon in his hand?

We didn't stay together much longer after that; I wrote him a long letter and collected my things from his place, and I wish I could say that was the end of it. A month later, I stood shivering in the doorway of my building at 3 A.M. in a bathrobe, telling a police officer why I'd called 911 from under my bedcovers to report a man standing on my back porch.

Our school would later initiate a no-contact order to help keep my ex-boyfriend out of my life until after we'd both graduated. But there was damage already done: For two decades, I'd believed home was a place I could expect to feel safe, and that when someone said they loved me, it meant I wouldn't have to wonder if they'd harm me. Now I wasn't sure anymore. In other words, I'd been initiated.