Gun Culture

An article and a series of photos on Wired.com documents the awesomeness that is the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot & Trade Show (OFASTS). After paying an admission fee of only $10 a day or $18 for the weekend (children under 10 are free), attendees can marvel at and shoot a wide variety of machine guns (to my delight, machine guns are included in the subject of technology). The climax of the expo is "Kill the Car", in which participants take aim at an explosives-packed car rolling down a hillside. Attendees included an anonymous former Apple executive, lawyers, and investors, making the OFASTS crowd not as redneck as might be suspected-- legal ownership of machine guns costs a great deal of money. OFASTS and two other expos of its kind in Kentucky and Arizona are among the largest in the country. These large expos are held in rural areas of the US, where permits to hold them are more easy to obtain. According to Wired photojournalist Pete Muller, gun-loving areas of the world are situated near state security institutions. Muller has documented conflict in Sudan and says (though it seems intuitive) that gun ownership is more common in isolated communities, especially ones in which isolation brings associated perception of danger. Gun ownership in America has historically followed Muller's observations.

The rest of the Wired article, touching on the facets of society involved in gun ownership, made me think about my reasons for being enamored of guns. Guns were integral to the way of life on the frontier and were instruments of the violence that took place there. "[I]ts sanitized memory has become a pillar of white American nostalgia," says Muller of the gun. Guns were pivotal to the American bid for independence and have come to symbolize the freedom and individuality associated with the American dream. My own experience with firearms stems from being on my high school's marksmanship team, in which shooting was a sport. I am enamored of the process of shooting rather than the implications of owning a weapon-- given the time, money, and legal steps taken to owning a gun, someday I would like to practice with one regularly. With a precision weapon, method is everything; I enjoy the ritual self-awareness that comes with regulating breath, loading, aiming, and firing, as well as the steps taken beforehand to ensure accuracy (abstaining from sugar and caffeine and achieving a sense of calm before getting to the firing line). For me, "gun" does not equal "threat" or "power" or "freedom" but signifies a yogic process of purification, so I suppose I'm different from stereotypical gun owners who want protection and see their guns as talismans against perceived threats. Firearm technology often has to do with what weapon is biggest, baddest and most efficient at killing things (at OFASTS, you can shoot a 750-rounds-per-minute M248 SAW), but that is not neccessarily what guns are wanted for.

Source: http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/12/pete-muller/?pid=4351