Mail Call: Girls, Guns, and Scare Quotes

By Andy Wright

In addition to a book about how to train your cat to defecate in a toilet and a jingly pair of felt reindeer antlers attached to a headband (oh, how they will be abused at the SF Weekly Christmas party!) I received today a tidy PR package from something calling itself the California Gun Girls.

The mission of the California Gun Girls is a simple one: to look nice while holding a gun and to hold still long enough so that someone can snap a picture for the California Gun Girls calendar. The notion of pairing traditionally attractive women with firearms is not a new one, but California Gun Girls has a hook. From the press release:

In striking contrast to an area well known for its anti-gun activist, all of the beautiful models hail from the San Francisco Bay Area!

Wondering who the lone anti-gun activist was, I continued reading.

When the inspiration for California Gun Girls was born, the producer had considerable skepticism about being able to find models in the stereotypically-liberal bay area.

But did she let that stop her? No!

To everyone’s surprise, as it turned out, attractive women familiar with firearms, was a non-issue.

The word “familiar” is used in the sense that, yes, all of these women had at least heard of firearms at some point in their lives. From the Web site FAQ:

Q: DO THESE GIRLS REALLY SHOOT?
MOST OF THE GIRLS FEATURED IN THE CALENDAR HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH FIREARMS.

OK, then.

The creators of the California Gun Girls calendar also seemed overly preoccupied with the location of the shoots:

They are all packing real “heat” and remarkably, all of the sets are non-studio “location” shoots.

The (dare I say?) liberal use of scare quotes in this sentence is “confusing.”

And from the all-caps Web site FAQ:

Q: HOW DID YOU GET ACCESS TO ALL THOSE LOCATIONS?
WE AREN'T AT LIBERTY TO SAY. ALL JOKING ASIDE, IT TOOK HOURS AND HOURS OF SCOUTING TO FIND THE PERFECT LOCATIONS FOR EACH OF THE GIRLS FOR THE CALENDAR. WE WERE COMMITTED TO FINDING LOCATIONS THAT SUPPORTED THE THEME OF EACH MONTH, AND CONTRIBUTED TO THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE SHOOT. ALL OF THE LOCATIONS ARE IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA.

Authentically speaking, most female police officers draw their guns while leaning up against some kind of cage. Also, most authentically, female soldiers often handle firerams while straddling jeeps and disrobing. We’re not sure how authentic the belly ring is.