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Below, you will find the pros and cons for both piercing guns and piercing needles. Read them. Study them. Make the decision that you think is best. When it comes to your body (or your childs!), you do not want to make a bad decision.
Since piercings are common among people of all ages—parents get their babies and young childrens ears pierced, and many adults add additional piercings as they mature—many people want to know which piercing method is best. No matter who you are, you will want the fastest, safest, cleanest, and most pain-free piercing method.
The Pros and Cons of Piercing Guns
Pros
- Accessibility: Most places use guns since its easier to train someone to use them, so if you are looking for a place that uses a gun, it will probably be easier than if you are trying to find a place that uses needles.
- Convenience: Its convenient to get your ears pierced while at the mall shopping.
- Affordability: Its sometimes cheaper to get a piercing at the mall or at a booth versus a qualified piercer. There less skill and training required, so they can charge less.
- Speed: Its over fast, with one quick pull of the trigger.
Cons
- Tissue Risk: There can be major tissue trauma when a piercing is performed with a gun. The piercing guns hold blunt studs, and when these studs are forced through the tissues, it literally rips the tissue in order to make room for the jewelry. If your piercing will go through the cartilage, it can shatter with blunt force.
- Messiness: When the blunt stud is shot through your skin, it can get messy. A wipe of an alcohol or antiseptic pad is not going to remove all those blood particles, however, and piercing guns cannot be properly sterilized. They get a lot of use and come into contact with bodily fluid... however, a simple swipe of an alcohol swab between uses is not enough to sterilize the instrument. Some claim that the instrument never comes into contact with the skin, but the piercers hands do, and they are touching the potentially contaminated gun and are further contaminating it with your blood.
- Training: Mall employees and booth workers generally undergo a whopping two-week course on how to use a piercing gun. Thats not a lot of time to teach proper techniques for infection control or healing.
- Infection Risk: Piercing guns use blunt studs that have butterfly backs. These can easily harbor bacteria and gunk, which can infect a new piercing. The studs are sometimes made of a low-grade material that causes an allergic reaction, scarring, and infection.
- Swelling Risk: The gun pinches the back of the jewelry snugly into place, which does not allow any room for the piercing to breathe and heal properly. Because the butterfly backing is going to be put on way too tight, you will experience increased swelling (it will swell naturally as part of the healing process, but it will swell worse if it does not have room to swell).
- Designed Just for Earlobes: Although these guns were designed only for piercing earlobes, mall employees also typically offer cartilage piercings and nose piercings with the same instrument. Cartilage can easily shatter with the pressure and force of a piercing gun.
- Loud: Piercing guns are loud, which can scare younger children more than anything. If the child jumps, the stud can easily get stuck halfway through, which means it must be removed. The gun will have to be recocked and the stud shot back through the tissue, causing more tenderness, bleeding, and risk of complications.
- Aiming and Angles: Piercing guns are hard to aim properly and so the piercing is more likely to be crooked or inaccurate. If the employee does not have it just right, the stud can go through at an awkward angle or a bad placement, which may cause your body to reject the jewelry.
Irritation: Most stores in the mall and booths that are certified for piercings will tell you that you need to turn your piercing a couple of times a day. This may sound like it makes sense, but in reality, all it does is irritate the new piercing and introduce bacteria, which will cause infection.