Sunday - December 11, 2011

Silly Foreigners

UPDATED UPDATED UPDATE: Still trying. Getting tired of going around and around with the emails. And I was wrong that both pictures had been sent to me to use. Only one was. The other—I’m only guessing here --- must have been attached to the original email I received, along with a full pasting of the text from my post. Because I wouldn’t recognize one of my own posts by it’s title just a couple days after posting it, nor would I be able to follow a hyperlink onto my own blog. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. That picture no longer exists on this blog, nor does the quotation that went along with it. I think everyone should be happy now.

I think this is about the last time I try and cover anything about any book anyone writes. It’s too much bother. I’ve been down this road several times before and I’m tired of it. In the future I’ll just be lazy and do a GR* and give you a link to somewhere else. Free publicity is getting too expensive from my end.

( * = I don’t want to write “Glenn Reynolds” or “the puppy blender” or mention “Instapundit” because I don’t want to hear from him ... or Frank J (who coined the ‘PB’ moniker I think, and who I hear from once every 3rd blue moon anyway, hope the baby’s doing great Frank.) for mentioning them without their prior approval.  Who needs the hassle? )

UPDATED UPDATE: I think we’re OK now. I’ve heard back from the publisher and I’m using the pictures they provided, and a short excerpt from some of the text provided. Always nice to have a bit of official blessing.

Um, Drew, those are the same pictures you had before!  Uh, um, no, they only look the same. These were provided with permission, instead of being harvested from somewhere else where they may not have been used with permission. Highly nuanced, but that’s how the world is these days.

UPDATE: I got an email from the publisher asking for the picture to be pulled. They say they are willing to supply an approved picture. Guess they’re pretty busy - I’ve seen the pictures on a dozen web sites at least. So I’ll play nice, and see what they send me instead.

In the mean time, reader Dan has written me a couple of times with information about women with guns on one of more of the Outdoor Channels. Seems there’s this reality show, Wildgame Nation about this family who work as hunting guides? And they also happen to host a beauty pagent that also has a hunt-off or something as part of it. News to me, I don’t watch that channel. I think Dan’s point was to show that pretty girls do exist who are no strangers to weaponry, not just posing with a rifle or a shotgun. Good point. Granted, that isn’t the point of this book. And I’m sure the Euro-wienies have all sorts of twisted theories about why American guys like to look at pictures of pretty American girls shooting guns. Or even regular looking women holding their own guns. Psst, EU: We aren’t afraid of strong women. Armed or not. Heck, they’re a blessing. Does carrying a gun make a woman (or a man) strong? No, but the attitude that grows alongside owning and responsibly using firearms does. It isn’t blood lust, and it isn’t homicidal intent. But it is a very American thing ... y’all over there just wouldn’t understand.

It’s often either humorous or irritating reading examples of American stereotyping in the foreign press. Sometimes it’s both. In the UK they apparently believe we’re all a gun mad lot, armed to the teeth and running about just hoping we’ll get the opportunity to shoot someone. Anyone. Everyone! It’s such a wrong idea that it’s laughable, but they keep right on believing it, year after year.

Here’s the latest ... ‘Chicks With Guns’ a new photo essay book that looks at the “often unsettling” relationship between American women and their own firearms. It’s been covered in a fair number of the British papers. Watching Americans is like watching a horror movie to them I think, or a slow motion train wreck. They’re badly frightened, they form the completely wrong opinions, but they can’t look away. Here are a couple excerpts from the book:

Alexandra and Truitt, Texas

This is a downsized and cropped picture of a woman, her baby, and her shotgun. Sent to me by the publisher with explicit permission to use it. It is in the book. The book tells her story. It must be a good story because every other web site on the planet that is covering this book is running this picture and telling you all about the woman and her story. I, however, will tell you only that one of the digital newspapers in the UK misidentified her double barreled shotgun as a rifle. Don’t get on their case too hard for that, because in the the UK the upper classes who own firearms often own double barreled rifles. They are very expensive. They look quite a bit like shotguns, except that they have sights on top of the barrels.

******************

My take? Another Strong Mom picture. I wouldn’t mind having the shotgun. I think it’s an Ithaca, in 20 or 28 gauge, which means it isn’t super expensive, and a 28 gauge doesn’t recoil very much. I’m sure that the naked baby and the empty shotgun will give the Brits apoplexy, making them foam off about Dick Cheney, ‘Elf & Safety mandated pre-natal infant hearing protection, or something. Silly foreigners.

Greta, California

“Many weekends were spent on hunting trips and I loved waking up early to begin the adventure. As I wanted to be a true part of the shooting parties, I studied hard with my dad’s help and completed the Hunter’s Safety Course at the California Department of Fish and Game so I could receive a Lifetime Hunting License. I was so proud when the certificate arrived in the mail three weeks before my tenth birthday!

As I got older and became more familiar with guns, I graduated to a beautiful .22 Winchester automatic rifle, which I am still using for target shooting.”

Based on polling research and gun-sale statistics, an estimated 15million to 20million U.S. women own their own firearms.

Ms McCrum, who does not own a gun herself, chose to document some of them in her book, saying that while the numbers of gun-toting females may be high, their profiles are low.

In ‘Chicks with Guns’, the women photographed talk about why they own a firearm and what doing so means to them.

Some work in law enforcement, some on ranches. Others relish the excitement of hunting big game, while several are accomplished competition shooters.

Some are fiercely concerned about protection and self-defence, while for others, such as Mrs Knight, the guns have been passed down for generations and become cherished heirlooms.
...
Lindsay McCrum’s ‘Chicks with Guns’ is graced on the cover by Greta, a young woman who received her first gun as an infant and earned her lifetime hunting license before her 10th birthday.


******************


My take? I find this shot, which is the cover picture, quite interesting. Not a single one of those antique firearms was made in America, from the early schutzen matchlock rifle on top to the two left handed flintlocks in the middle down to the Danish blunderbuss at the bottom. Her pistol is an English Forsyth system* scent bottle pistol, ca. 1820. [thanks for that info, publisher lady!] And I’m pretty sure that the deer is a Red Stag, the kind that only grows over there. Hey, Americans can own nearly any kind of boomstick, but this seems an awfully European looking picture for a book about American women and their firearms. Nor was I aware of any states that had lifetime hunting licenses available to minors.

Update: Guess I’m wrong about the lifetime licenses; you can get one in California. And while I’m right about the guns and the stuffed animal in the picture, the young lady is from California. I gather her family collects antiques, including antique firearms. Greta got to play a young Annie Oakley in a PBS American Experience Special. They liked her shooting ability so much that they expanded her role and used her in more shooting scenes than she’d originally expected. Cool.

I guess I should be fair to the UK press. They do actually present the information about this new book in a pretty straightforward manner, at worst saying the images are “unsettling” but the public can comment on the article, and comment they certainly do. Both Wired Magazine and Huffington Post here in the US have covered the book, and even at those not-exactly-Red-State-America kind of blogs the reader reaction has been generally positive. About the worst they can come up with is that the women in the pictures aren’t always beauty queens, and perhaps they’re being exploited for profit by the photographer. Or that there aren’t enough/any black women in the pictures shown online. The Brits, on the other hand, pretty much loose their marbles and start foaming at the mouth, linking to US crime statistics and calling for world disarmament. I guess they just can’t handle it, but I’m not sure which “it” I’m referring to: the guns, or the strong and capable women who are carrying them?

From Amazon.com:

In Chicks with Guns, Lindsay McCrum has created a cultural portrait of women gun owners in America through photographs that are both beautiful and in a sense unexpected. The book examines issues of self-image and gender through the visual conventions of portraiture and fashion, but the guns are presented here not as superimposed props but as the very personal lifestyle accessories of the subjects portrayed. And it defies stereotypes often associated with aspects of the popular culture of both guns and women. Like the 15-20 million women gun owners in this country, the women we meet in Chicks with Guns ( their portraits are accompanied by their own words), reside in all regions of the country, come from all levels of society, and participate seriously in diverse shooting activities. The women here are sportswomen, hunters, and competition shooters. Some use guns on their jobs and some for self-defense. They may not all be classically beautiful, but in these photographs they all look beautiful, exuding honesty, confidence, poise, power and pride. They are real women with real guns that play a part in their lives. By focusing her camera respectfully on this particular aspect of the American scene, gun-wielding women and girls, Lindsay McCrum sheds new light on who we are in America today.

See Peiper, I do read my mail. It sometimes just takes a while for me to do anything about it!

Posted by Drew458     on 12/11/2011 at 08:35 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control • UK •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner