[Leica] Re: Gun hostility, very much OT

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

The expressed hostility toward guns is of comparatively recent origin  
in the US. Where I grew up in the rural Midwest every family owned  
one or more guns, usually a shotgun and a small bore rifle. For a  
while the Red Ryder BB gun was the most sought after Christmas  
present in Indiana and Illinois. Young boys started out with BB guns  
at the age of 8 or so and graduated to 22s by their twelfth birthday.  
Boxes of 22 bullets cost 50 cents and were sold in every drugstore.  
It was a rural coming of age ceremony.

Guns were part of American culture and history. Less than half a  
century had elapsed since the closing of the frontier and only a  
couple of decades since the end of the Great War. It was considered  
patriotic for all young men to learn to shoot. Gun ownership was  
clearly the secret to military preparedness. Men could come off the  
farm proficient in firearms. What enemy would dare to attack a well  
armed citizenry. Boy Scout camps taught gun handling. Every high  
school in a small town had a rifle team. Farmers paid teen agers to  
shoot crows in their cornfields. The annual deer or turkey hunt was  
essential to a well fed holiday season. The NRA was a respected  
organization, not the butt of late night comic jokes.

But then the bulk of the US population became urban. Guns were the  
tools of bad guys. War was conducted with tanks and airplanes. Bambi  
was a runaway movie hit. Too many presidents were assassinated or  
nearly assassinated and Moses led the NRA. People who had never  
handled guns developed an unreasoning fear of the unknown.

The rate of gun ownership correlates poorly with the amount of social  
violence in any culture. Here is an excerpt from a short book I wrote  
a few years back about the experience of a Hoosier living in the UK.

If you read the glossy travel brochures you might think that Britain  
is an island overflowing with peace and tranquility. How untrue. The  
newspapers and TV newscasts are fond of derogating the USA but they  
seem to be stuck in a vision of Prohibition era Chicago with junior  
league Al Capones shooting up the neighborhood and the Mafia running  
the corner pizza parlor. The Columbine school shooting is a case in  
point. Rather than treating the problem as a case of uncontrolled  
high school angst that needed a lot of parental attention and some  
hands on school supervision, it was all blamed on the US Constitution  
and the National Rifle Association. Britain has the moral high ground  
here. They banned hand guns after a similar shooting a few years ago.  
What the papers didn't mention was that the murder rate in some parts  
of Britain is almost as high as that in the US except that the  
weapons of choice are cricket bats, broken Guinness bottles and  
assorted blunt objects.
        
        Last week Britain's most popular female TV host, Jill Dando, was  
murdered in front of her London home by an, as yet, unidentified hit  
man. It was as if Katie Couric had been bumped off leaving the beauty  
parlor. The nation involved itself in an orgy of mourning. It was  
Princess Diana?s demise revisited. BBC flags flew at half staff.  
Parliament declared a day off. Flower sellers rejoiced.

        There were also three bombings in London's minority districts last  
week. A neo-Nazi group claimed credit for the nail bombs which  
exploded in Black, Bangladeshi, and gay neighborhoods, killing three  
members of a wedding party and wounding dozens. While the papers  
couldn't blame this on the lack of US gun control laws, they pointed  
the accusing finger at the Internet. It seems that survival fanatics  
living in Montana have posted plans for bomb making. To prove their  
point, the papers reprinted detailed instructions on how to make the  
terrorist bombs. All it takes is the powder from a box of shotgun  
shells poured into a pipe, a cheap alarm clock as a timer, and a bag  
of hardware store nails. Easy. Any child can do it. And given the  
detailed information in the papers, one probably will. Even without  
the Internet.
        
        The British don?t need guns or bombs to kill people. Syringes will  
do just fine. Dr. Harold Shipman, a general practitioner, was just  
indicted for killing three hundred of his patients. Not through  
malpractice but through cupidity. Dr. Shipman had his elderly  
patients sign over their property to him for safekeeping. Soon after,  
the patients took a turn for the worse and died in their beds with  
Dr. Shipman in attendance at the final moments. A journalist took the  
time to calculate that Dr. Shipman was singlehandedly responsible for  
more deaths than all of Britain?s serial killers combined.
        
        England (not Wales) has twice the rate of property crime as the US  
and four times the rate of auto theft. In central London the  
probability of finding your car radio still in the car after a night  
parked on the street is roughly the same as winning the lottery. That  
is if you are lucky enough to find the car. Most cars are sold with  
"immobilizers", little devices which enable you to disable a vital  
portion of the ignition circuitry when you park. Armored steering  
wheel covers are a big seller. These are jimmy proof steel pie plates  
that cover the entire wheel and prevent it from being turned.

        The only statement not blaming the US for Britain's wave of violent  
crime was an editorial in the London Times which suggested that if  
tough gun laws were the only answer, then Washington D.C. would be  
the safest place in the US. In fact, they pointed out, the safest  
places are Vermont and New Hampshire, both states with the highest  
percentage of gun ownership in the country. Perhaps, the editorial  
suggested, the stratospheric crime rate in Britain is because there  
are too few guns. If home owners felt that they had a moral  
obligation to shoot housebreakers and thieves it might convince a few  
bad guys to think twice. Then Britons too could leave doors and cars  
unlocked - just like in Vermont. The NRA would have rejoiced.

Kyle, keep up the good work.

Larry Z


On Oct 20, 2006, at 8:17 AM, lug-request@leica-users.org wrote:

> Jayanand, I grew up in HK and moved to the States in 75 when I was  
> 13. I
> can turn you that from my experience, this series probably bothers  
> me as
> much as it does to you! To think that this is a predominant thing  
> sends
> chills up my spine.
>
> At 07:22 PM 10/19/2006, Jayanand Govindaraj wrote:
>
>> Kyle,
>> I think its a brilliant series, and truly frightening for those  
>> not used
>> to guns (like me!), that this a predominant culture.   However  
>> much you
>> humanize them, it still comes across as chilling, at least to me. But
>> again, the photographs are compelling. My interactions with the  
>> USA and
>> its culture has been largely on the coasts, and large urban  
>> centres, and
>> my reactions probably show this.
>> Cheers
>> Jayanand
>>
>> Kyle Cassidy wrote:
>>
>>> Steve brings up some very real and interesting points, all of  
>>> which I've
>>> been thinking about a great deal over the last year. Certianly my
>>> photographic moods have taken various twists and turns since I  
>>> joined
>>> this group in 1998. I've photographed goth models, people who cut
>>> themselves, people with tattoos, and various other little things  
>>> along
>>> the way, and I did each as long as it was alive in my mind and  
>>> when it
>>> started to get old, I moved on. And it happens that during this
>>> particular project, with the invaluable help of some people on this
>>> list, I should mention, I convinced a publisher that they should  
>>> pay me
>>> to keep doing this. The opportunity and financial ability to keep  
>>> doing
>>> it has served to keep it interesting longer -- it gave me the  
>>> ability to
>>> work not in my immediate area, but to drive across the country  
>>> and meet
>>> people -- which is really very exciting to me. Had a publisher  
>>> gotten
>>> behind me to keep photographing cutters, or got me back to  
>>> romania to
>>> photograph the kids in the sewers, I would have been just as  
>>> happy. I
>>> took pictures before they paid me, and I'll take pictures when they
>>> stop. I suspect that Steve's not a doctor for the money, rather that
>>> healing is part of his nature, but that occasionally the money  
>>> suggests
>>> a direction -- where to live, what to practice -- and so move we  
>>> all.
>>> The money doesn't give you the drive, just the ability to keep at  
>>> it and
>>> keep yourself in film.
>>>
>>> As for the tiny slice of psychopathology -- it's not that tiny, it's
>>> nearly half of every single house in this country and, as Jim  
>>> pointed
>>> out, why does nobody talk about it? If one want to talk about tiny
>>> slices of psychopathology, we could talk about leica camera  
>>> ownership.
>>> One of the things that did fascinate me about it from the  
>>> beginning is
>>> that nobody talks about it, or at least nobody that I know.  
>>> Subcultures
>>> I find fascinating. Had I driven across the country photographing  
>>> the
>>> main stream ("100 portraits of people who live in houses!") it  
>>> probably
>>> wouldn't have interested me as much, though, in some parts of this
>>> country (Lousiana and Wisconsin for example) Gun Culture is not a
>>> subculture, it is indeed the Predominant Culture -- you can just  
>>> to door
>>> to door, introduce yourself, and start photographing.
>>>
>>> As to whether or not this is doccumentary photography, I'll leave  
>>> for
>>> art critics to say. I was very motivated by Mary Ellen Mark's
>>> photographs of the Aryan Nation in Idaho. Looking at her photos  
>>> years
>>> ago I found myself thinking "holy smokes, this woman looks like she
>>> works in a Dairy Queen"
>>> (http://sapere.alice.it/gallery/Mary_Ellen_Mark/zoom1.html) I was  
>>> very
>>> impressed that Mary Ellen wasn't influenced by the costumery, or the
>>> rhetoric, she took a portrait like she'd take any other. That  
>>> made me
>>> realize that these women might, in fact, work at the Dairy Queen  
>>> after
>>> all, and that they have kids, and go to the park, and live in a  
>>> house,
>>> and whatever else. Seeing the face behind the mask made me very  
>>> curious
>>> about all the other faces and all the other masks -- business  
>>> executives
>>> who dress in leather and ride harley's on the weekends, Mild  
>>> Mannered
>>> men who pay women to beat them up, Star Trek fans, groupies --  
>>> Secret
>>> Identities.
>>>
>>> Going into this I had two main criteria:
>>> 1) I'd photograph anybody who was willing to be photographed whom I
>>> could physically get to. Nobody got preference, nobody got cut,  
>>> to get
>>> in, all you had to do was have a gun, let me come over, and sign  
>>> a model
>>> release. I've had waaaay more opportunity, (volunteers) than I've  
>>> had
>>> the ability to get to and limits on paper and book prices have  
>>> limited
>>> this to 100 portraits, which I think is a pretty decent size -- most
>>> photo books seem to hover between 50 and 75.
>>>
>>> 2) I was going to treat every portrait as if there were no guns  
>>> in it.
>>> I'd treat this as an assignment to photograph people in their new  
>>> homes.
>>> Or, as it turned out to be -- people and their pets. My thought  
>>> was that
>>> by doing this, It would present the gun issue in a larger  
>>> context. I'm
>>> not interested in guns -- I'm interested in people -- what are these
>>> people like? What are their lives like? I thought the best way to  
>>> find
>>> out was to look at where they live. Some of them have a big  
>>> relationship
>>> with guns, some have guns they haven't taken out of the closet in
>>> fifteen years, some of them don't like guns at all -- but they're  
>>> all
>>> part of those 4 in 10 american households. Some of these people have
>>> sinnister portraits because they look stern and live in a foreboding
>>> enviornment, some of these people look cute and harmless because  
>>> they
>>> smile a lot and live in cute and harmless looking houses. Some  
>>> people
>>> are messy, some are neat freaks.
>>>
>>> Certianly this project gets clipping at the top and the bottom  
>>> end of
>>> the spectrum. Many people on the left wings don't want their  
>>> neighbors
>>> to know they have guns. Many people on the right think that I'm  
>>> working
>>> for either Sarah Brady, producing a book that ridicules gun  
>>> owners, or
>>> that I'm working for the ATF compiling a list of people who own  
>>> guns for
>>> the Great Confiscation. In fact, so vociferous has been the noise  
>>> from
>>> the very hardest core of the gun culture threatening to kick my  
>>> ass for
>>> producing anti-gun propaganda that my publisher freaked out and made
>>> sure that I got an unlisted phone number.
>>>
>>> I suspect that everyone gets out of this something flavored by  
>>> what they
>>> came in with, and that's what I'm interested in hearing about, other
>>> people's reaction. So far, it's kept people talking and I think  
>>> that, in
>>> my mind at least, makes it successful.
>>>
>>>