Jim and Nicky with his Taurus .38 snub nose special, Colt 380-Auto, Pony Pocketlite and Sig Sauer P232 .380. (Photo: Kyle Cassidy)
Jim: When I was diagnosed with cancer I found myself and my family in need of protection. I was too old to fight, too sick to run, and since cancer took my vocal cords, I couldn't yell for help. I purchased my first ever firearm.
Freelance writer and photographer Kyle Cassidy traveled 15,000 miles taking photos of gun owners in America and asking them this simple question: "Why do you own a gun?" Some of their answers were surprising.
Two years later, he compiled his work in a book titled Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes. Link - via One Large Prawn
or
"Robber's guide on house owners to avoid"
Just from the site : "When I am angry at the world I find relief in dropping a clip into the air"
Yep.
also, why the ridiculous wide angles? let alone the pictures where he's let the distortion stretch peoples' faces, i just don't see how anyone needs that much bland living room to dwarf the subject. i need a valium.
If you poured through it, you'd probably ruin the book.
Gun culture isn't unique to the USA. What about all the Middle Eastern countries where they fire guns in the air at weddings? They don't have any problems with violence.
(1) I guarantee that your voted-most-smug-community-in-the-world only exists because somewhere, heavily-armed rough men stand ready in the night to defend it.
(2) I am quite sure that the number of guns in your vicinity is far greater than you suspect.
I laughed out loud I read that, thanks.
But people still pose with then and show it all around the web.
I find it personaly lame. =]
There are bad things in the world, whether you see them or not. Some of us are lucky to be born in places where they're not as visible.
And JF, you should visit the US sometime and thank them and their guns that the rest of the world isn't part of a facist government right now.
I promise you won't get shot, unless you're breaking into someone's house, or trying to take control of the country! ;)
How quickly we forget the history that created "the gun culture."
Without those Americans and their nasty guns, you'd either be sieg-heiling your little heart out or rotting in a concentration camp.
- evil pundit: so the current order in denmark (and rest rest of europe) is due to the continued effort of the american military? i think the european governments will be pleased to hear that they are no longer necessary, thanks to the US
- the silliest claim of them all is that societal order is upheld by privately owned guns: this is bullshit and you know it. society is upheld by common laws who in turn are being enforced by the governmental system, which in turn guarantees your right to bear arms. so without laws there would only be guns to fall back on, and this isn't exactly freedom, is it?
- anyone who keeps an assault rifle, or a machine gun for self protection should seriously consider moving to a safer city.
Was that supposed to be sarcasm?
Because your guns manage to kill more playing children, students and innocent homeowners than actual criminals and your so called freedom gets chipped away bit by bit while you watch on and applaude the tyrants doing the chipping (who have, by the way, tanks and missiles and atom bombs and other BFGs that make your guns look like gorram toothpicks).
Gun ownership is not merely for protection against random criminals, but for protection against oppressive governments (from within or without!) and mob violence like that occurred in the LA "Rodney King" riots or in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
L.C. is obviously NOT a police office since (s)he doesn't realize that personal ownership of automatic weapons has already been outlawed many years. How could a real police officer not realize this? Very fishy.
I could swear the book has been blogged here before.
But seriously, you are talking of government controlled troops fighting wars with a sense of rationality (The USAs objective for helping liberating Europe was to prevent Mitsubishi Zeros and V2´s over New York.)
Another case is when every clown on the street have easy access to guns. It could be a paranoid clown, or a very agressive clown, or a clown who sells the gun to criminals. I don't think you clowns should have that access. ;-)
In that time span about 65 million have died in war.
And, probably, less than one million have been murdered by a criminal with a firearm.
Its pretty simple to do the math and see where big anti-gun organizations are coming from, wanting to let only the government have guns.
For more mundane self defense, as opposed to defense against genocidal tyrants, please consider that in the vast majority of cases where one defends themselves or their home with a firearm, NO ONE is shot, much less killed. The Brady Campaign's statistics willfully LIE by ignoring this, and supposing that only those criminals who are shot and killed, without the shooter EVER being arrested (like while police sort out what happened) are counted as self defense. In my own case someone tried to beat me to death with a weapon in my own home, I would be dead if I had not had a .22lr training rifle nearby... my assailant didn't care about a life in jail or my pleading, but certainly did not want to be shot. I never even had to point it at them, and according to anti-gun groups I didn't defend myself.
When I wrote "UK" in my prior post, I was referring to the United Kingdom. You may say "British", but I did not want to leave out the brave soldiers, sailors, and airmen from Northern Ireland, so my definition of who saved rollover Denmark was a bit broader.
Look at Britain, Australia, ect. WHen you ban guns, only good, law-abiding citizens get rid of their guns. If you are a criminal, you already don't care for the law.. so why would you follow a gun ban???
Also, please get your terminology correct, a full-automatic weapon is an assault rifle, and those are insanely expensive in the US (Full auto M16 =$16,000). Now, most of the people in the book own SEMI Rifles (one trigger pull, one shot), that are cosmetically made to look like assault-rifles (full-auto).
I own a copy of this book, and it fills my heart with joy to see all these good people, ready to protect life, liberty and limb.
Every country? I like guns as much as any decent American gun nut. But let's not make some magical claims here. Violent societies are violent regardless of the proliferation of firearms. The crime rate examples of Britain and Australia are on the low end compared to the US when it comes to murders, and closer to US when it comes to assault. Furthermore, neither hadn't a strong culture of firearm ownership previously. The attempt to link gun ban causation is rather weak. Crime trends there have a pretty weak correlation. And in the case of the UK, trends may even be heading lower.
This isn't to say a gun ban is a good idea. Just that the linking gun bans with crime is a bit of a fiction when not taken into account with other data.
I laughed out loud a the "smug town" crack and the image of "heavily-armed rough men stand ready in the night".
Culture is an amazing thing. People are generally unaware of the ways cultural power molds their systems of thought and behavior. I am presently saving up my pennies for a trip to Orchid Island to check out Yami culture. The most prized possession for protection in Yami culture is a silver helmet made from melted silver coins. These helmets protect the wearer from evil spirits. Look, the humans are a species capable of believing anything. But, I'd rather hangout with the Yami than visit the gun crazy USA.
I should point out that right now amazon.com has it at a nice discount.
:-)
kyle
--
www.armedamerica.org
Actually, the opposite is the case. Easy access to guns means equivalent easier access to guns for criminals.
Well if you do, I can immagine that the large numbers are the reason. Well what about a product that has killed on average 28,000 a year in the US?
If you had the choice which one would you like to ban first?
If you said the object that has killed 41,000 a year, then congradulations. You have just banned the automobile (your car and all road vehicles)
If you said the object that killed less, that was the gun. Which by the way, is responsible for more suicides than murders.
Truth is death is inevitable, we fear it a little too much. In some cases we invest a larger ammount of fear to other types of death. For some reason genetal mutilation prior to being set on fire is feared more than just getting shot. You can see this fear everytime a new disease is reported as a possible pandemic. People fear bird flu more than they do the regular flu. Guess which one kills more people every year? The regular flu. It is only natural to fear death, what is beyond reason is our poor rationality when it comes to creating laws that try to prevent death. If we were consistant, everything that has a potential to kill us would be outlawed. Let's start with all cars before we move on to guns.
The car has a completely different function than the gun. The car is not designed to kill, when used properly. The gun is designed to kill. That's is function. Your purpose for it may be protection, but its function as a device is to propel a bullet, most often into a living object, for the purpose of incapacitating or killing that living object.
With a car, your purpose may be to get to work, pick up groceries, drag race, or to get laid. But the car's function is transportation.