The Southern Man Shoots
By Max Cooper
18 Apr 2008
The man we call Mr. Pink wants me to try out his shotgun. It's a short-barreled, rabbit-eared twelve gauge, the kind you'd use to deter bandits from robbing your stagecoach, and Pink beams with pride. His gun has become an object of ritual: Withstanding its teeth-chattering recoil is all that separates me from manliness.
There is an informal, implied line drawn in the dirt. I chamber two shells and step up, leaving my camera with one of the other guys. Downrange is an array of bottles, cans, and a broken TV we're saving for later. I pull back the hammers and find a loose sight picture. Touch both triggers gingerly. Pull the stock in tight. Tighter. Deep breath. Wince. Pull.
The occasion is a bachelor party. One of our group is taking the plunge—a man so Southern he has two first names that both start with the same letter, who does not drink, and does not frequent gentlemen's clubs. So here we are, deep in the mountains on the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. We plan to shoot more than 1,000 rounds by dark.
Getting in is half the fun. A line of pickup trucks groans up a logging trail, the beds loaded with weapons, ammo, camping gear, and anyone who can't fit in the cab. We're playing Clutch on the stereo. A mile or so into the woods we pass a pig sty and come into a clearing—affectionately called The Holler—occupied by an abandoned single-wide trailer.
It never occurs to us that we are part of a culture. The trailer, the pickups, the camo pants and ballcaps, the fact that we are all large white men, the tactical shotgun, the Kalashnikov carbine, the Glock on my hip—we don't think of these in terms of identity.
If you were to ask us who we are, the answers would seem disconnected and disparate: A painter, a spa manager, a photography teacher, the leader of a church youth group, a ballroom dancer. Most of us are college educated. On any given night, you'd be just as likely to find us in downtown Asheville, the East Coast's San Francisco, rather than out here in the woods. After a day of shooting, we're likely to end up in a restaurant, arguing about existentialism, Marxist cooperatives, and Metallica's artistic credibility.
Left to our own perspectives, we would not view these gatherings as unique. This is how we grew up—shooting is like bowling, playing video games, or going to the movies. It's as normal as shopping for groceries. I began documenting these gatherings in college, when I learned that many people don't see it that way.
One morning before Christmas, I enter the woods with one of the other guys just after dawn. We're squirrel hunting. It's my first time hunting anything, and his first time hunting in years. We walk for four hours without seeing a squirrel. We have made a complete circuit around the valley, trudging through knee-deep fall leaves, when I spot one.
I'm carrying pump-action twelve gauge, much like the tricked-out Mossberg we shoot at cans and appliances. I am a very good shot. The squirrel is running along a branch, right above the bead sight on the muzzle. It's the first time I've ever pointed a gun at a living creature. I choke. I know I won't shoot it. Following the squirrel with the muzzle is now an academic endeavor—then there's a deafening roar. My friend has shot the squirrel.
Later he tells me everyone chokes their first time. But around here, most people's first time is when they're eight years old.
In college humanities classes, I was taught that men like my friends were outdated. Gun ownership itself was outdated, a Freudian holdover from less civilized times. Firearms were a psychological crutch for men who felt emasculated by the modern world. Masculinity itself was a social construct, and the key component in the South's culture of violence.
As I began documenting our gatherings, and frequenting the local shooting range with my camera, I could feel judgmental eyes looking at my photos. "Do these people carry their guns all the time?" "What a bunch of whackos." "Is that legal?" I kept my mouth shut; the only thing between me and the subjects of my photos was the camera.
Once, in an upper-level photo class, a sociology major asked: "How long have you been documenting the white race?" It was a tough question, with a dual answer. On one hand, since never; on the other, my whole life.
It's some lazy afternoon, and my friend and I are sitting on his porch. We are white. His dad, also white, is telling us how to sight in a rifle. Around us, stretching for miles in every direction, is the South.
"When you can shoot .22 hulls off a board at twenty-five yards, off hand, rapid fire, with iron sights, that's when you can shoot," he says. I look downrange. I can barely see the .22 shell casings at all.
Later, my friend tells me that his dad was not exaggerating. His grandfather was a crack shot. He had to be; if he missed, loved ones went hungry.
I've gone from photo student to photo teacher. In class, we're approaching the documentary portion of the course. I show my students my photographs, nervously. They don't say much. Finally, one of them offers, "My brother likes to go in the woods and shoot, cause he's a redneck or whatever."
Driving home, I hear on the radio that a front-running presidential candidate has made a blunder, saying that rural people cling to guns out of economic bitterness. It must be running for president that gives someone an understanding of economic bitterness. But he has a point, I realize, as I count the change in a mason jar on my dresser. A .22 round costs a fraction of a penny. I think about the squirrels, arcing through my sight picture.
It is shortsighted, though, to think that's all there is.
We go to a gun show. My friends are shopping, I'm handing out promo cards for my documentary. It's packed. The event staff tells me the wait to get in was 45 minutes when the doors opened that morning. "Obama-fever," he says. People are stocking up before the election.
After the show, we're playing chess outside a small delicatessen. I ask my friends what they will do if the next president bans guns.
"Like, total ban? Door to door round-ups?"
"Sure. What will you do when they knock on your door?"
There is a loaded silence. Finally, one of them says:
"I might just decide it's time to buy some real estate." He does not mean land. "If there's warning, I'd head up to the Holler. I could pay a good price for it there."
I don't know what I would do. Our country began because the government sent troops to disarm the colonists in Concord, but that was over two centuries ago. The world has moved on.
Perhaps our professors and presidential candidates are right, and these things we take for granted as harmless normalities—being armed, white, male and southern—are actually markers of an outdated identity. Perhaps they signify a culture that is no longer wanted. We carry them around, hidden from the world, because we ourselves cannot move on.
Back in the Holler, the bachelor party is over. We unearth ourselves from our sleeping bags at dawn, stagger to the trucks, drive back to civilization. At home, I plug in my memory cards and start downloading. I turn on the shower and take off my shirt. In the pale light of morning, on my pale shoulder, is a knot of broken blood vessels: the kiss of Mr. Pink's shotgun, rising into a bruise.
