Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Chicks with Guns book

From Today / MSNBC.com:
Image: Alexandra Knight with son Truett and gun
Lindsay McCrum
This photograph of Alexandra Knight with her son, Truett, appears in the book “Chicks with Guns.” “I’m so eager to teach my boys everything I know,” the Houston mom writes in the book. “Knowing that one day they will be teaching their boys or girls the same thing with the same gun makes me smile.”
By Laura T. Coffey
TODAY.com contributor
updated 9/28/2011 9:42:22 AM ET

Pop quiz: Name one accessory that grandmothers, moms, girls, wealthy socialites, middle-class females and low-income women might be likely to own — and cherish — all across America.
    If you answered “a gun,” you’d be correct.
    Based on polling research and gun-sale statistics, an estimated 15 million to 20 million women in the United States own their own firearms. Dozens of those heat-packing women are documented in “Chicks with Guns,” a new book by photographer Lindsay McCrum that is sure to challenge almost anyone’s assumptions about gun ownership.
    “Their numbers are really high but their profile is actually really low,” said McCrum, who spent three and a half years capturing artistic and arresting portraits of women with their weapons of choice.
    “I was so surprised by the variety and breadth and diversity of these women,” McCrum said. “There are so many stereotypes about guns, mostly derived from popular culture, but the reality is so much more complex and varied than you can imagine.”
    Image: "Chicks with Guns" book cover
    The Vendome Press
    Greta, the young woman pictured on the cover of "Chicks with Guns," received her first gun as an infant and completed a hunter’s safety course to earn her lifetime hunting license before her 10th birthday.
    “Chicks with Guns” reveals just how true that is. The book features nearly 80 portraits and captions in which women describe the role of guns in their lives in their own words. It quickly becomes apparent that rich women, poor women, young women, old women, athletic women, sedentary women and a fair number of confident girls possess guns for reasons that are peculiarly their own.
    “I learned two main lessons while working on this book,” said McCrum, who divides her time between New York City and California when she isn’t traveling for work. “One is that on the subject of guns, nobody is neutral. And the other is that when you get outside of the blue-state cities, everybody has a gun.”
    Some women in the book work in law enforcement. Some work on ranches. Some relish the thrill of hunting birds or big game. Some are accomplished competition shooters. Some are fiercely concerned about protection and self-defense. Some have guns that have been passed down in their families for generations and have become cherished heirlooms.
    Some shoot because the activity is a natural outgrowth of their relationships with their fathers, husbands or brothers. Some chuckle because they’re much better shots than the men in their lives. And some delight over bringing specific guns home because the weapons make them swoon.
    “I own a gold .50-cal Desert Eagle with tiger stripes, one of the largest, most powerful pistols out there,” a Minnesota resident named Theresa writes in her caption in the book. “Any girl would understand when I explain it was something I saw and HAD TO HAVE. Some women experience that feeling with clothes, some with jewelry. For me it was with a large firearm.”
    In one memorable photograph in “Chicks with Guns,” Alexandra Knight, 38, of Houston, Texas, is pictured with a gun in one hand and her naked baby boy in the other.
      Slideshow: Photos of women with guns explode stereotypes (on this page) “As much as I have an affinity for the beauty of guns, it’s not so much about that with me, and the act of hunting I could really care less about,” Knight said in an interview. “For me it’s the camaraderie and the time spent around the idea of hunting and guns that I love. It’s about being with my children and being with my father and being with people I love in beautiful parts of the country. ... It opens up beautiful dialogue about the respect of guns and how that translates to respect of nature and respect of other humans. Ironically, it brings up a lot of things I’m passionate about.”Knight said she knows her portrait with her then-9-month-old son Truett has the potential to generate strong reactions from the people who see it — but she had strong reasons for wanting it to look just so. The gun she’s carrying used to be her grandfather’s, and her father taught her how to use it. She’s also wearing her father’s belt buckle in the photograph.“It was all about family and tradition,” Knight said. “Here it was the gun that was passed on to me, and I’m holding in my right hand what I’m going to pass on to my son. It was kind of that circle of life and tradition and everything else.”
      Gun safety in the home It stands to reason that a book about women and guns would touch on the issue of gun safety in the home — particularly in households with young children. “Chicks with Guns” stays neutral on this and other highly charged subjects and allows women to share their feelings and thoughts without judgment.
      One mother named Elena who lives in Roseburg, Ore., explains how her job as a 911 dispatcher led her to overcome the discomfort she felt about owning a gun.
      “Dealing with the calls that we field on a daily basis made me really aware of what people are capable of doing,” Elena writes. “I’m a single mom and I’ve got two kids, so I feel like if I’m ever put in a situation where I need to protect them, I’d prefer to have a gun.
      “I had to sit my kids down and talk to them. Kids are kids and they can get into things like that. They are 7 and 8, so I wanted to take them shooting so they could see how powerful guns are. It scared them at first — the loud bang and seeing the watermelon explode like it did — but they realized how important it was that you never, ever play with guns.”
      Image: Anita, a police officer pictured with a gun in the book "Chicks with Guns"
      Lindsay McCrum
      Anita, a police officer pictured in "Chicks with Guns," still remembers feeling an overpowering reverence for life when undergoing firearms training for her job. "I can never take a bullet back," she thought to herself at the time.
      Meanwhile, Liz, another woman featured in the book, is a former police detective who has handled cases of sexual assault, domestic violence and homicide. She, too, has been deeply affected by the inhumanity she’s witnessed, but she has a different take on guns in the home if children are present.
      “Since I’ve been in law enforcement, I’ve always had a gun in my nightstand that I keep loaded, no safety on, ready to go, one in the chamber, because that’s the only way I feel it’s effective,” the San Jose, Calif., resident writes in the book. “If I had kids it would be a different story. I would never, under any circumstances, have a loaded gun in the house if there were children there. That is extremely unsafe. I can’t think of a worse thing to do.”
      So ‘comfortable with those firearms’ McCrum said almost every woman she encountered while working on this project talked passionately about gun safety. Many also were completely conversant on the gun laws in their states. McCrum, who doesn’t own a gun herself, was struck by the ease and confidence so many women had with their weapons after years of training with a huge emphasis on safety.
      Image: Jen, a woman pictured with a gun in the book "Chicks with Guns"
      Lindsay McCrum
      "My son Clay ... has a bear rug hanging in his room from a hunt when he was 2," a Montana resident named Jen writes. "He was with me when we spotted the bear. I took it in one shot and I waddled down the mountain with my gun on my shoulder and him on my hip."
      Stephen L. Meagher, a former federal prosecutor who wrote the introductory essay for “Chicks with Guns,” made a similar observation about the women in the book.
      “I found the looks on the faces of the women themselves to be striking,” Meagher said in an interview. “You just see how comfortable they are with those firearms. There are hundreds if not thousands of books about the political side of gun ownership in America, but I have never seen one that put together the artistic side and the personal side of gun ownership and women like this.”
      McCrum — who didn’t want to reveal her age but described herself as “old enough to dislike overhead lighting” — was a painter for most of her life before 2003, when she switched exclusively to portrait photography. She still fondly remembers an art history teacher she had at age 16 who taught her that art should be a reflection of its time and should push people to think about the world around them in new and different ways.
      “[Gun ownership] is a really serious and complex issue, and it deserves serious consideration,” McCrum said. “It deserves far more than sound bites geared toward people’s fear and hate. This project is not about politics or policy. I’m not interested in glorifying anyone, nor am I interested in vilifying anyone. I was just really curious.”
      To see additional images and read caption excerpts from “Chicks with Guns,” click here to view a slideshow about the book. To learn more about photographer Lindsay McCrum and her project, visit ChicksWithGunsBook.com.

      9 comments:

      1. Greta, the young woman pictured on the cover of "Chicks with Guns," received her first gun as an infant

        This is the image that comes to mind here!

        ReplyDelete
      2. “Since I’ve been in law enforcement, I’ve always had a gun in my nightstand that I keep loaded, no safety on, ready to go, one in the chamber, because that’s the only way I feel it’s effective,” the San Jose, Calif., resident writes in the book. “If I had kids it would be a different story. I would never, under any circumstances, have a loaded gun in the house if there were children there. That is extremely unsafe. I can’t think of a worse thing to do.”

        I am the only one who sees a high degree of cognitive dissonance in someone's asserting that with nobody else in the house they will keep a loaded gun at the ready, while insisting that when they have young, defenseless people in the house they will not do so? Maybe cognitive dissonance is too strong a term; howzabout just plain stupid.

        ReplyDelete
      3. Democommie sez:
        Am the only one who sees a high degree of cognitive dissonance in someone's asserting that with nobody else in the house they will keep a loaded gun at the ready, while insisting that when they have young, defenseless people in the house they will not do so?

        No

        Maybe cognitive dissonance is too strong a term; howzabout just plain stupid.

        Yep.

        ReplyDelete
      4. Democommie:
        I am the only one who sees a high degree of cognitive dissonance in someone's asserting that with nobody else in the house they will keep a loaded gun at the ready, while insisting that when they have young, defenseless people in the house they will not do so? Maybe cognitive dissonance is too strong a term; howzabout just plain stupid.

        What's stupid about keeping a loaded firearm in the home for defense? How is an empty home relevant, except maybe to present a need for defense? How many women are the victims of home invasions and related assaults when there are others in the home? Why should anyone other than an individual have the right to refuse another person the right to self-defense? Why give a criminal the upper hand?

        ReplyDelete
      5. I find the term "chicks" mildly offensive. Perhaps used tongue-in-cheek it's OK, but not as a serious attempt to define a group of people.

        The women pictured are about as representative of women who own guns as the cast of The Beautiful is to depict a normal cross section of society.

        One other thing I noticed is an exaggerated description of how many they are. Even if the 10 million figure is correct, percentage-wise, that's really pretty low.

        ReplyDelete
      6. Mike. Got any facts to back that up? I don't have the link at my disposal right now but something like 11 million women hunt. That probably puts the number much higher. One sentence in particular is right. "Once you get out of Blue State cities, everyone has a gun. "

        ReplyDelete
      7. mikeb302000 sez:
        I find the term "chicks" mildly offensive.

        I thnk JadeGold has it correct when he points out the parallel to G. Gordon Liddy's "Packed & Stacked" and other females with gun pornography--the best examples coming from Oleg Volk.

        P. Sez:
        One sentence in particular is right. "Once you get out of Blue State cities, everyone has a gun."

        Which is a false satement because it is highly likely that it can be shown that there is at least one person who doesn't own a gun.

        ReplyDelete
      8. "What's stupid about keeping a loaded firearm in the home for defense? How is an empty home relevant, except maybe to present a need for defense?"

        What's stupid is what she said, moron. She appears to think that defending herself/her property is more important (requiring a loaded gun, with a round in the chamber, safety off) than protecting the same property with extra, little, defenseless persons in it. Now do you get it, or were you blinded by the muzzle flash?

        "I don't have the link at my disposal right now but something like 11 million women hunt."

        When you have the link at hand (and it's not a link from the NRA or some other Gunzloverz source) bring it to the discussion. Until then, asking Mikeb302000 if he has "facts to back that up?" is unintentionally hilarious.

        ReplyDelete
      9. Laci, Good point about P's contention that out there "everyone has a gun." And he's the guy who asks me for facts to back up what I said about the percentage of women gun owners.

        My contention that 10 or 15 million women gunowners is small percentage is an OPINION.

        There are 80 million altogether, I say 15% or 20% is "really pretty low."

        This is one of the pro-gun tricks, to ask for facts or proof as a way of inferring that you have none and are wrong and are making shit up. Sometimes they do this trick in such a sloppy manner, like P did, that the original comment was an opinion or other times it's something that they know damn well there are no facts or stats, but they ask anyway in that disingenious way.

        ReplyDelete