2nd Amendment Cowboy

When I was a child, my younger sister and mother were held up at gunpoint in our Portuguese supermarket in Toronto, Canada. My mother broke her finger defending herself and my sister was traumatized for some time. The two men were never caught and mom bought a BB gun at K-Mart during a vacation in Florida shortly after. When we returned to Canada she would flash this fake gun in front of her customers, saying “tell them to come back, I’ve got something for them.” I remember thinking, if they ever come back, they will kill us all. Then I thought, it’s not real, but people think she has a gun and somehow this fake $9 gun may protect our family. This left a tremendous impression on me. The powerful American symbol, real or not, and the notion of vulnerability that comes with this perceived power. I became an American citizen in 2015. During the naturalization process I was required, by law, to take an oath in which I swore to bear arms if required to do so, and to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Essentially, I swore to bear arms in order to protect the right to bear arms, against everyone including my new fellow Americans. This is something that I took very seriously and I’m still conflicted on today. Through this survey of American gun culture, I'm attempting to understand who the American gun owner is, how I feel about guns, and the people who own them. I'm also trying to understand how to merge the identity I grew up with and the culture I've chosen to be a part of. All images have been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. No use permitted without license from Daniel Gonçalves.