Photo Credit: AP/ Miguel Villagran
Photo Credit: AFP Photo/File/Jeff Haynes
Life can be truly stranger than fiction at times. Images reproducing very separate beliefs and ideals, signify how normalized celebrating the culture of the gun has become. Some people believe that our society would be safer if everyone could defend themselves by owning a firearm. Others say that firearms only encourage people to settle disputes using violence. Whatever the justification for handguns in society, these two images conjure up distinct meanings.
In the first frame, the handgun is celebrated as high fashion. The picture was made during the Berlin Fashion Week and shows a model wearing a belt designed like a gun. The handgun is depicted as an accessory -- one representing a haute couture statement of excess.
The second image is more edifying in some way, since it is used to illustrate an underpinning ideology in American society. The image illustrates a story about how West Virginia is considering a bill to teach schoolchildren how to use firearms in the hope that the initiative will increase state revenues from hunting licences. The picture is intentionally generic and indexical -- it is not meant to address the deeper significance of what it would mean to teach schoolchildren how to use firearms. I can just imagine a student's class schedule: homeroom, math, English, and handguns. The sobering side of all this is that in 2004, the FBI reported that 66 percent of the 16,137 murders in 2004 were committed with firearms.