Furniture as politics
have no effect.
Repeated exposure to guns desensitizes people to them, said Lou Manza, chair and professor of psychology at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. “Someone who is exposed to guns in a variety of different ways can become desensitized and lose an appreciation for what guns can really do.”
This desensitization doesn’t lead to gun violence, Manza says.
“But,” he continued, “if you have small kids in the house, and they are exposed to guns in any form, they will start to see them as OK. And they’re more likely to use guns, or pick guns up, or respond to guns. And then there is a possibility for something to happen.”
That possibility matters in Arizona, a state that is usually close to the national average for gun ownership. Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor and the man behind the website gunscholar.org, said about 40 to 45 percent of Americans own guns.
Provocative art
Gore, the concrete artisan, learned gun safety as part of growing up hunting in Huntsville, Ala. Now, he owns seven guns he describes as tools — “mechanical devices that launch bullets.”
From the tattoos on his muscular frame to the dominant image on the Gore Design Co. website, guns loom large in Gore’s life. On his arm, a revolver. On www.goredesign co.com, Gore stands in an alley at night, pointing a handgun at a concrete mixer. Accompanying text details how he murdered traditional concrete, which is survived by composite concrete.
In the 21⁄ months his shop has been open, only two people have objected to the AK-47 tiles he makes, Gore said.
“I don’t view them in the context of the current debate,” Gore said, mentioning that he draws from Laozi, traditionally considered the founder of Taoism, in matters of morality and governance.
The sixth century B.C. Chinese philosopher is credited with writing the “Tao Te Ching,” a collection of 81 short poems or passages that have nearly limitless interpretations covering interpersonal interaction and governance. He is credited with such sayings as, “Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner” and “The best fighter is never angry.”
Gore first cast the AK-47 as a gift for a friend, saying, “It’s a provocative image for sure. It’s the quintessential gun; Tupac (Shakur) has them tattooed on his stomach, or he did have them tattooed on his stomach. It’s really the most iconic gun in the world.”
Shakur died of multiple gunshot wounds in 1996 in Las Vegas.
When Scottsdale boutique co-owner Evon Yaro-Fig was planning the women’s wear shop Nové, the first thing she budgeted for was the gold
Philippe Starck M-16 assault rifle floor lamp (about $3,200) that she’d seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art store in Manhattan.
“Everything in the store is feminine and masculine at the same time; it’s a contradiction. There’s something very pretty with something much stronger,” Yaro-Fig said.
When the top French designer created the series in 2005, he wrote, “Why doesn’t furniture show that everything is a political choice? I am a designer and design is my only weapon, so I use it to speak about what I think is important.” As such, the lamp’s Italian manufacturer, Flos, donates 20 percent of the collection’s gross to the humanrights organization Fratelli dell’uomo.
Yaro-Fig isn’t a gun owner and has never fired a gun, but the lamp is her favorite piece of decor in her shop. She talks about how the inside of the shade is printed with crosses to represent gun-violence victims and how an approximation of a Beatles lyric is stripped across the base, “Happiness is a hot gun.” It’s a conversation piece. “We knew it would be that way when we brought it in,” Yaro-Fig said. “We could’ve sold it 50 times, at least.
“It’s a giant gold gun in a women’s clothing store, it’s just something you don’t see every day.”
Both sides of the coin
Eric Heber’s best-selling item in the Southern Homewares line on Amazon is the Redneck wineglass, a Mason jar on a stem handle. But the AK-47 bullet- and gun-shaped ice-cube trays ($9.99 and $10.99, respectively) are gaining, and he expects them to be among the top 1,000 most-purchased kitchen and dining items on the website by Christmas.
Hebert put the 10-bullet silicon molds on the market in January, unaffected by the Newtown shooting the month before.
“They’ve been in the works since early last year, and you don’t just pull the plug on something,” Hebert said. “They’re more of a novelty gag gift for someone who owns guns.”
Southern Homewares is based in Harrisburg, N.C., and specializes in cutesy, sometimes absurd items, including a topselling corkscrew that relies on a stylized part of the male anatomy to do the work.
But Heber talks about adding more gun-lifestyle products to a line that already includes a portable gun safe and a shotgun shell belt, saying, “I’m not the biggest hunting aficionado, but many of my employees are.”
For another novelty design company and wholesaler, though the Newtown shootings changed things.
Since hitting the market in 2010, a gun-shaped ice-cube tray called “Freeze” ($9.50) had been Fred & Friends’ best-selling ice tray, marketed for James Bond- and spy-themed parties, according to designer Jason Amendolara.
“To me, when somebody says, ‘Freeze,’ (it) is usually associated with the good guys,” Amendolara wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t see Freeze solely as a work of design. I see the ice in someone’s martini glass at a 007themed party with all the men in tuxedos and the women painted gold head-to-toe.”
After negative feedback following the Newtown shootings, the company offered to take back products that retailers no longer felt comfortable selling.
“In our Spring 2013 line, we had two products in the shape of bullet shells, which we chose to pull in light of current events. I can’t say if they will ever be released,” Amendolara wrote.
Changed view
To put guns in a fashionable, playful or stylish context is to minimize the fact that their primary function is to kill people, said Beverly Hills-based psychologist and anti-mediaviolence activist Carole Lieberman.
“It’s not a piece of art; it’s a killing machine,” she said. “Using gun-shaped household objects, using them as decor or in fashion, just kind of makes light of guns, light of killing, light of what guns are used for.”
Lieberman said exposure to images or replicas of guns can lead to an increased tolerance of guns, gun owners and gun enthusiasts.
“It takes the violence out of it and makes them seem chic,” she said.
Lew Gallo, owner of For the People home-accessories store in Phoenix, used to see gun decor as chic. His previous store, Haus, sold a ceramic handgun vase — “It took something ugly, possibly shocking, and turned it into something beautiful” — and other items that he describes as provocative and edgy.
But that was before three people he knew in Arizona were killed by guns. That was before he realized some of his shoppers might know people who had been killed by guns.
“From an architectural eye, guns look very cool and can be quite sexy, because they’re angular,” Gallo said. “But over the last few years, because of what’s been happening, I stay away from them and keep them out of my store. The negative and possibly sad response that it could provoke in a customer wouldn’t be something I would want in my store.
“When you think of people using guns to rob banks or fight in a war, that’s one thing, but when you think of them as something to shoot children in a school or to shoot a public figure in cold blood, it just changes things.
“That’s not what my store is about. I want people to be inspired and laugh and be happy, not to be reminded about something like that.”