Pointed Questions

Once, when I included the “On Target” documentary on my resumé, I got a very pointed question during a job interview: “Are you a shooter of guns?”

What an interesting way to phrase it. I answered as honestly as I could. “Yes,” I said, and left it at that. The interviewer seemed to want more, some qualification or rationalization. His real question was, “Are you a gun nut?”

The pointed questions about this project are a lot less vague:

“You’re not a liberal commie, are you?”

“I understand what your project is about, and I respect many of the ideas behind it, I just have a problem with our gun culture, and how it translates to many Americans being arrogant, entitled, and oblivious.”

First, I am not promoting the gun culture. If there is indeed a gun culture, I am documenting it because of its conviction. Nowhere else in our society are people so passionate about exercising their rights, except maybe at protests and the voting booth. Anyone can take protest photos, and you aren’t allowed to photograph people as they vote. Plus, you never hear about the “voting booth” culture.

Second, I am not, nor have I ever been, a “liberal commie.” But I did like this Kalashnikov display at the gun show: