Many people each year get their ears or other body parts pierced with piercing guns. Many of these people also experience excessive complications that are completely avoidable! Lets discuss why you should never get pierced with a gun again, but should choose hollow needles instead.
Piercing guns are a plastic tool that are not sterilized, so there is bacteria just waiting to be dispersed into the next person's piercing. This leads to an increased risk of infections when being pierced with a gun! Hollow needles come fully gas sterilized and are only used once, before they are thrown away. This avoids any risk of infection right out of the gate.
Also, piercing gun are more traumatic to your tissue as they use blunt force to shove the earring through your ear. This causes the piercing to have jagged edges and extra skin in the back that can harbor bacteria and causes the piercing to take much longer to heal. Hollow needles essentially cut out a place for the jewelry to fit perfectly in the piercing with smooth edges that allow for easy healing with no places for bacteria to hide!
The jewelry used in piercing guns is often not made of a suitable material for initial piercings- initial jewelry should be implant grade which means F-136 titanium, 316L surgical steel, 14kt gold, or niobium. Usually the cheap earrings used are some type of alloy that can cause allergic reactions and prevent the piercing from healing as it should! These earrings usually have butterfly backs as well, making it hard to keep the jewelry loose enough to allow for the natural swelling of a fresh piercing. When visiting professional piercer, you will be provided with high polish, implant grade jewelry that has extra length to allow for swelling. If your jewelry does not have enough room for the swelling of your piercing, many complications can arise very quickly. One of these complications is the embedding of the jewelry, meaning that the back or the front of the jewelry gets completely consumed by the ear! If you want to know more about swelling and fresh piercings, see this blog.
The people who use piercing guns often to not have any kind of training. This causes the piercings to come out lopsided or not in the place that you wanted it to be! The piercers who use hollow needles are trained professionals that have to undergo a minimum of a year as an apprentice under a professional piercer before they are allowed to pierce anyone unsupervised. They also must take a blood borne pathogens test to further ensure the cleanliness of their practice for the safety of they clients.
Furthermore, the piercing gun is already illegal in MANY major countries. Knowing this information, you should not risk your health in such a way just because it is cheaper or more convenient. In the end you will likely regret your decision and end up with an overall negative piercing experience that could be avoided entirely by seeking a professional piercer that uses the proper tools and safety methods!
I hope this blog has been informative and that you will pass this information along for the safety of others!
Until next week,
Kourtney 🖤