A Woman’s Place in Gun Advertisements: The American Rifleman, 1920-2019

In this chapter, we create a bridge between the existing research on gun culture and on the portrayal of women in advertisements by looking at gender advertisements in The American Rifleman magazine over a 100-year time period, from 1920 to 2019. Based on the existing literatures on American gun culture and gender in advertising, we expected to see a consistently stereotypical portrayal of women in gun advertising in The American Rifleman over the entire 100 year time period we examined. What we found was substantially more complex. In examining a woman’s place in gun advertising, we offer some first steps toward understanding a woman’s place in gun culture more broadly.