Gender and Firearms

Book excerpt: Private gun ownership for self-defense remains a major personal and public issue in the United States, driven by concerns about crime, vulnerability and a range of ‘ideological’ factors, including race and gender. As media attention centres upon the extent to which women are taking up firearms, with the gun lobby and firearms manufacturers celebrating the ‘new armed woman’, and guns being promoted as ‘Rape Prevention Kits’, this book explores the changing gendered aspects of gun ownership. Can ownership of firearms by women be considered, as some have claimed, the embodiment of what might be termed ‘pioneer feminism’, as women resist male violence in a dangerous world, or are different stories told by the prominence of women in firearms control campaigns, or the fact that women remain frequent victims of male gun ownership? Analysing representations of the ‘armed woman’ in firearm and gun lobby marketing and advertising campaigns, together with television and popular music forms, Gender and Firearms: My Body, My Choice, My Gun examines the directions taken in the public debate on weaponisation in the United States, considering the role of women in the politics of gun safety and gun control. The book draws on statistical evidence in order to shed light on trends in gun ownership, whilst engaging with feminist scholarship on the relationship between gender, violence, risk and vulnerabilities, thus opening up critical new debates surrounding identity, performance, gender and risk in contemporary societies. As such the book will be of likely interest to sociologists and scholars of sociology, criminology, and cultural and media studies with interests in gender, embodiment, risk, crime and violence.