A Katniss with guns: British-born Brooklynite, photographer Sharif Hamza has a fascinating project on children who are more interested in gun-related sports than in soccer or tennis.
In light of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Miami Dade, Florida, this project takes on a special urgency. Most of the children, ages ranging from 12 to 18, are from Texas, Florida, Arizona, and the Southern States, which are emerging children’s markets for guns. The Florida shooter, Nikolas Cruz, prior to being expelled from Stoneman Douglas, was a member of a Varsity Rifle club that received a ten-thousand dollar grant from the NRA.
Hamza notes that children of this other America prefer guns over soccer balls primarily because they have a different perspective on their environment from children raised in rich, urban and suburban centers on the two coasts and progressive states. The former see the world as a more “dangerous” place with rising crime and insecurity, than the latter do. The rich, one can guess are focused on making money, getting ahead in life in the usual capitalistic way, and they may see the world as a risky, yet exciting financial market.
My two cents: You can’t produce or protect wealth with guns but with intelligence and wit. The clever know that.
Besides shooting-sports aren’t physically active sports; you just stand and shoot targets. Being a physically unchallenging sport, it is a low-risk and no-strategy sport which parents from progressive states in America don’t encourage in their children.
Hamza’s project is yet another evidence that America is a divided nation, from the cradle itself.
Present Continuity 