Spanning three years and 280 photo shoots, Lindsay McCrum’s new book, Chicks with Guns, is a collection of photographs that explores a variety of women’s personal histories with guns. Ordinary women pose dramatically with rifles or handguns against backgrounds that hint at their complex relationships with these most controversial firearms. In one photograph, a young woman named Greta poses with her antique pistol in a room filled with hunting rifles and a stuffed deer. She mentions that she received a revolver from a family friend before the age of one. The juxtaposition of Greta, in a gray feminine dress, and the assortment of rifles in the background destroys the stereotypical images of women with guns. McCrum’s photographs illustrate that guns are a part of these women’s lives, and she seeks just to portray what real women with guns are like — sort of the cultural antipode to Hot Chicks With Guns. The unusual theme is grabbing significant attention (not hard to imagine given the ire that Second Amendment arguments stir), selling out at Amazon on its first day — but you can still order it for about $27.

via WIRED