Photography by Kyle Cassidy
Bernstein Gallery, Princeton University
Exhibition dates: March 30 - May 1, 2009

Panel Discussion: April 7, 2009 from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.,
Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall,
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.

With what Picture magazine called "the grit of a true documentary photographer", Kyle Cassidy spent two years and 15,000 miles crisscrossing the country meeting American gun owners, photographing them in their homes and asking them all one question: "Why do you own a gun?" The Bernstein Gallery's exhibition shows 37 photographs and interview quotes out of over 200, a collection that resulted in a book, Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes, published by Krause books in 2007. This honest, sometimes quirky collection of images has been called "Riveting", by the Washington Post, "A fair picture of who owns guns" by Field and Stream, and won praise from outlets as diverse as WisconsinPublic Radio, the Library Journal, Penthouse, and Guns and Ammo.

On April 7, 2009, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. there will be a panel discussion on guns in American in Dodds Auditorium. The panelists are: Peter Brooks, Lecturer, Comparative Literature, Princeton University Center for Human Values, Mellon Visiting Professor; James Jacobs, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts; Director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice, New York University School of Law; Nicholas Johnson, Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law. Panel Moderator: Stanley Katz, Professor of Public and International Affairs and Director of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School.