All is not well in America, one could reasonably conclude—if one did not already think so—after a visit to the National Rifle Association’s annual convention, which took place in Dallas this past weekend. I was there, along with the photographer Mark Peterson and some eighty thousand others, many wearing shirts announcing their beliefs: “Keep Calm and Carry Guns,” one read. The President of the United States was hardly less explicit. To the collective glee of those watching him live, Trump yelled, “Knives, knives, knives!,” laughed at the time John Kerry broke his leg while bicycling, in 2015, basked in the support of Kanye West’s Twitter feed, and only once mentioned Parkland, Florida, toward the end of an hour-long speech that might, in a different universe, have been about guns and how fewer of us can be killed by them. Donald Trump is the first sitting U.S. President to address the N.R.A. since Ronald Reagan, in 1983, and the first ever to do any of the above.
An N.R.A. member views guns from different manufacturers on the convention-show floor.
Peterson’s stark black-and-white photographs of the event—shot both inside the enormous convention center, where it took place, and outside, in the rain and the sun, where protests and counter-protests unfolded in front of cameras and curious onlookers—capture the many strange and at times contradictory facets of the firearm-loving culture that dominates much of the country. There’s the earnest appreciation of the futuristic, aesthetically marvellous technologies on display; the primal yearning for the protection and freedoms that firearms can seem to offer; the disdain for legal oversight or intervention of any kind; the moral distance between the governors and the governed; the clarity and agency of children. The gun, in these images, can be seen in at least three ways: as toy, adornment, and tool of death. But it is always, unmistakably, in the foreground.
Donald Trump spoke at the N.R.A. Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum.
Mathew Duerr, age nineteen, of Oak Ridge, Texas, looks over guns.
Alyssa Milano poses at the NoRA rally outside the convention center.
A member of the Dallas, Texas, chapter of Proud Boys participates in a Second Amendment Come and Take It rally outside the convention.
Analese Briant, age ten, of Arlington, Texas, participates in a rally outside the convention.
An advocate poses at the Second Amendment Come and Take It rally outside the convention.
A leader of the Dallas Proud Boys chapter speaks to the media at the Second Amendment Come and Take It rally.
Sourse: newyorker.com
