Photographer Kyle Cassidy Asks, “Who Is The American Gun Owner?”

The Brady Campaign, the nation’s foremost anti-gun group, maintains that around 39% of this country’s population are gun owners, and that in this country there are somewhere around 192,000,000 guns. The NRA’s numbers are much higher, but regardless, figues like these seem to have given photographer Kyle Cassidy the inspiration for his forthcoming book, Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes, which will be in stores this July.

As the introduction states, “this book isn’t about guns, it’s about people.” From the samples afforded us on the book’s website, a diverse array of gun owners have been profiled. From the avid antique collector, to the punk rock husband and wife who own a tiny .22, to the methuselah who didn’t purchase his first firearm until he was cancer-stricken, presumably in his late 70’s, every type of household can be an armed household.

Armed America, while seemingly comprehensive, evidently doesn’t pose any bias or judgment upon the issue of gun control, never tries to wrestle with the question of gun ownership or where any legal lines should be drawn. Instead the author simply accepted invitations from American gun owners to come and shoot them in their homes, took interviews, and laid out telling quotes from each which, collectively, somehow paints a portrait of the importance of guns to the American identity.

Interestingly, pre-orders for Armed America appeared on Amazon.com on the day of the Virginia Tech shooting.