Wives in Danger from Gun Toting Culture

The following is an excerpt from Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy by Joan Burbick (The New Press, October 17, 2006). You can read an interview with Burbick here.

He was much larger than I am, and he had a beefy football-player build and short dark hair -- the bouncer type. He was going to get physical if I objected. He was ready to push as we walked quickly past the long row of tables covered with guns and ammo, past the woman collecting money for admission. Talk to him, I said to myself. Talk to him. I kept telling him I didn't work for the newspapers as he herded me to the exit.

"No pictures," he kept repeating.

"No pictures," he insisted one last time as he opened the heavy door and gently pushed me out. Then he closed the door and left me standing outside with my camera dangling from my hand.

A hand-lettered sign appeared outside the entrance: NO CAMERAS ALLOWED.

Thirty minutes earlier I had walked into the public fair-grounds to attend a local gun show in Moscow, Idaho. It was the mid 1990s, and I was taking photographs of abandoned lumber mills and deserted mines in the Pacific Northwest. I was shooting what I thought were the industrial ruins of the rural West. I had also taken pictures of men in gun stores eyeing a new rifle and men hunting during deer and elk season, the ordinary lives of rural Westerners. I wanted to add pictures of men and women at gun shows.

At that point, I wasn't writing about gun culture. I was only taking pictures of daily life in small rural Western towns.

My husband eventually found me outside. We talked about what had happened and decided to find out if it was legal to prevent me from taking photographs at a gun show held at a public fairground. We phoned around and received conflicting answers from city and county attorneys.

The phone system in the small town was working well that day. By the time we came back to the gun show to talk with the organizer, an unofficial compromise had been reached with the relevant public officials. I could come back the next morning with my camera and photograph before the public was admitted. I could photograph the exhibitors and their exhibits if I asked permission first and they agreed.

I was disappointed, of course. What I wanted to shoot was the feel of the gun show. How people held guns, bargained with sellers, traded, and shopped for guns. I wanted to inch closer to why guns were so important to rural Westerners. I wasn't certain what I would find.

I agreed to the conditions. Some pictures are better than none.

Before I left, I asked the organizer why they enforced rules against cameras. What was the problem? Was it a distrust of government? Did they think I worked for the ATF, the IRS, or the FBI? Was it anger against gun-control groups? Did they think I worked for Sarah Brady's handgun organization, or for Cease Fire, a Seattle-based gun violence prevention group? Maybe it was about hunting and animal rights? Or worse, I could be a PETA worker.

There was a long list of possible reasons for the no-camera policy.

The organizer looked at me hard when I asked the question. Why no cameras? He responded with one word: "Alimony." "What?" I asked. Had I heard right?

"Alimony?"

"Yes, alimony." He then explained that the men inside the gun show didn't want their pictures showing up in newspapers where their ex-wives might see them.

I asked him more questions, but he wasn't in a talking mood. It was about alimony, period. I'd have to leave it at that.

Maybe the organizer thought some ex-wife had hired me to track down her husband and prove that he was handing over for a new hunting rifle what should be her cash. Maybe the organizer actually thought that ex-wives scanned the local papers looking for photos of their former husbands to see if they could catch them spending what was legally theirs.