Book Review: Armed America • Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes
I just got finished with Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes
Making up these families are were white people, black people, Asians, Jews, women, children, lesbians, soldiers, hunters, rape victims, target shooters, grandfathers — all united in their appreciation of firearms.
Ultimately, seeing such a diverse panoply of individuals who think the way I do made me feel a bit better about myself. You see, I was raised in an environment where the prevailing wisdom seemed to go that gun owners were backwoods rednecks who shot at tin cans and were so stupid and undereducated that they couldn’t read and didn’t vote.
Though I know logically that this is pure nonsense, it’s still hard for me to shake it at times. When I look at my gun, I sometimes still think, “does this make me paranoid or reactionary or mentally unbalanced?” Since coming out to my parents about being a gun owner, these are charges that have occasionally been leveled at me. It’s been a great comfort to read about all the gun owners out there who are happy, healthy, well-off, responsible, and forward-thinking.
One of the best aspects of the book is its lack of a political agenda. There isn’t even any commentary of any sort; each two page spread displays only the owners with their weapons, a list of said weapons, and a few short sentences told to the photographer on why they own the guns. Here’s an example:
Says Cicily, the wife in the picture:
I grew up in a gun environment, but the only people who had guns were gang members. I thought guns were bad things and only bad people had them. I had no exposure to any positive gun experiences so I didn’t know there were normal people who had guns. Matt took me shooting and I had so much fun. I was really impressed with how responsible everybody was. I felt like I was part of something very serious, fun, but everybody took it so seriously and so responsibly that I felt very safe. Now I want to go small game hunting because I love to cook. I want to learn how to cook pheasant and rabbit. I want to learn how to butcher — I want to do it all. All the stuff that all these old Wisconsin women seem to have been born knowing.
Reactionary, mentally delayed, or ignorant? I think not — that’s about as apolitical as it comes. These are good, rational, normal people, and they populate all 208 pages. The images are rich and human; they display happy, quirky people and their neat, messy, elaborate, and simple homes with their dogs, cats, children, cars, and meals. I really felt transported right into these people’s living rooms.
And yet I almost found myself more entranced by each explanation as to why the owner had a gun. I’m always fascinated to learn about the motivations of gun owners. I start to think back to my own and I realize that my reasons are so heavily individualized, taking into account childhood upbringing, a desire for rationality in political positions, an obsession with the mechanical, the desire for self-reliance, and rebellion against my parents. I suspected that other gun owners had similarly multifaceted reasons, and I was not let down. In fact, I found myself really and truly moved by three answers in particular that I found to be especially thought-provoking. Here they are:
Kevin:
As a Jewish American I am cognizant of the fact that 6 million of my people were turned into air pollution in the ’30s and ’40s. As a civil rights advocate I know that at some point words are not going to be enough when people are kicking down your door to pull you out of your house because you’re Jewish, black or gay. You can’t be pro civil rights without being pro gun. It’s hypocritical to deny someone the most basic of all human rights, which is the right to defend yourself.
Mike:
I am liberal Democrat and many of my friends are surprised to find that I’m a gun owner. They have this idea that gun owners are all a bunch of rednecks out in the woods poaching deer, but we’re all over the spectrum, not this monoculture.
Todd:
I never thought I would need or want a firearm until in 2002 I was told by law enforcement during a community outreach program that in the event of a disaster such as a terrorist attack or a massive hurricane, they will not be able to protect everyone. People will have to fend for themselves. It seems like common sense now after what happened in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina, but I was naïve then and I thought the powers that be would always be there to keep law and order.
The diversity of opinion as well as the eloquence of those expressing them was staggering to me. Since the book makes no effort to push any political message, the only clear goal I can think of that this particular photographer had was the goal of any competent photographer: to capture his subjects as naturally as possible. Through not only warm, inviting images of regular human beings just like you and me but also their profound and thought-provoking responses to the question of gun ownership, that goal is admirably achieved.