She's Got a Gun

"She's Got a Gun" begins with Floyd's purchase of a handgun in 1991 and her passage into the gun world. The author soon experiences the popularity of Ladies Day at local shooting ranges, the publication of "Women & Guns" magazine, the release of "Thelma and Louise" and "Terminator 2" movies, and a media frenzy that put American gun women centre stage for a while. Floyd's interest in the 1990s gun woman phenomenon turned into a photographic study in 1993, when she began interviewing and photographing some of the women she met. By 1997 she was researching gun women from the past to study both how they were represented in images and if their behaviour made any contribution to our understanding of today's gun women. By combining personal narratives, visual culture, and social history, "She's Got a Gun" becomes a visual history of America's gun women from the Civil war era to the present. This highly illustrated volume, with over 125 images, looks at how armed women have positioned themselves within or against the mainstream culture of their time, while also revealing how mainstream America's perception of gun women has changed over time.