Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

A Well Regulated Militia

Last Thursday’s Tigard/Tualatin Times reported that Oregonians are more into guns than ever. Local gun club memberships are on the rise, and local and national sales of guns, holsters, and other gun-related equipment are increasing as well. The article doesn’t have a terribly empirical explanation for this set of trends, but it quotes local gun shop owners and club spokespeople attributing the rise in gun-love to the election of Barack Obama last November. They say that gun enthusiasts fear that the Democratic president will curtail American’s Second Amendment rights.

Whether or not the Second Amendment is in peril, it’s true that guns are a permanent and contentious part of American culture. Laura Browder traces the always controversial history of women and guns in her book Her Best Shot. You might think this account, which describes women hunters, sharpshooters, political activists, and other women gun owners and advocates, would be either dry and academic, or imprecise and sensational; but instead, Browder’s readable narrative emphasizes the complexities (and often the contradictions) of the roles guns have played in women’s lives, and the roles armed women have played in our society. In particular, she shows how women with guns bring out our culture's anxieties about gender roles and morality. And the book's introduction features a survey of the use of images of young women in gun advertisements, which is also fascinating.

Images of Americans and their guns are the focus of photographer Kyle Cassidy’s book Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes. It is, just like it sounds, a collection of family portraits. The only twist is that these families are visibly armed, many of them heavily. But, in living rooms and kitchens, with pet dogs and cats in attendance, with babes in arms, all the folks in the pictures are just that, regular folks. Each portrait is accompanied by a caption listing the names, home state, and weapons of the family in the picture, together with a brief statement from one or more family members explaining why they own guns, and what their weapons mean to them. The reasons, the weapons, and the people are all surprising – gun ownership is often a very private matter in our culture, and Armed America helps bring this facet of American's lives out into the open.

One group of Americans who have a lot of pressure to keep their interest in guns under wraps are political progressives. But left-wing gun aficionados can always turn to the American Gun Culture Report for a little fellowship. The zine is full of critical perspectives on all issues relating to guns, progressive and conservative politics, and U.S. culture. Some highlights from the first three issues: a discussion of the portrayals of guns in Hollywood films, analysis of mainstream gun magazines, a profile of the Portland branch of the gay gun rights organization the Pink Pistols, and a regular feature highlighting unexpected gun owners.

(For those of you who, like me, have not yet committed the entire Bill of Rights to memory: the title of this post is the first phrase in the Second Amendment.  You can peruse all the amendments, and the rest of the Constitution at the National Archives' online exhibit The Charters of Freedom.)