The name of the book is “Portraits of Gun Owners in Their HOMES” not “candid photos of gun owners down at the local gun range,” so I don’t think that the photographer is trying to shock people by presenting the gun owners in a fairly formal setting with their firearms displayed and labeled. The interiors are a part of what makes each photo so distinct and fascinating — conveying a sense of who these people are. In fact, in many of the photos, you don’t even notice the firearms until you’ve considered the photo for several minutes and let your eyes wander through the rooms. I can’t see that a series of photographs taken at the gun range would be as visually fascinating or would convey as much about the subject.

Hi Chris - thanks for your comment.

To me, as a non-gun owner living in England, these pictures are kind of surreal, as we don’t really have such a prevalent gun culture in our mainstream society, and very rarely come into contact with them, so their immediate connotations are usually negative.

My original post was the reaction to the pictures on the website I had linked to, and I obviously had not heard or found the audio, which really gives great background to the pictures.

While you haven’t changed my personal opinion of guns generally (I don’t like them), you have certainly put me right as to my interpretation of the pictures and why they were taken, and I have edited my post accordingly (but left what I had written for context!).

I would strongly advise people to listen to the audio tracks - it contains the voices of the people in the photographs, and makes for fascinating listening. Thanks!

Thanks for posting about Armed America. It was my intention from the start to create a platform whereby people could have a discussion about important topics and to try and be as unbiased as possible in doing so. I think it’s been a success, based on responses from both pro and anti-gun reviewers. (There are some reviews on http://www.armedamerica.org though I have a feeling those sorts of things are really only interesting to the author.)

There are plenty of photos of people at ranges shooting guns, nobody remembers them though. They fill the pages of gun magazines and are largely unremarkable for a few reasons. I chose to photograph people in their homes because I wanted to show who people were, not just that they were gun owners.

Thanks again for posting,

Kyle

It’s rare a blogger will so honestly admit they are wrong. Thanks for taking a second look at Mr. Cassidy’s book.

Yeah - think its because I usually post about things with a small audience (i.e. tecchie things not many people care about!) as opposed to this, which is a potentially far wider reaching topic on which people have much stronger views. It certainly generated far more interesting comments than usual!