Punk Rock 101: Wearing Bullets

I have a tendency to wear bullets (empty shell casings). I have a few bullet belts, a bullet wallet chain, and bullet on a chain necklace. The idea of wearing bullets is to make people think. When something is out of sight, out of mind, like war being an ocean away it’s easy to pretend it doesn’t exist. The idea is to confront people and make them think about what their tax dollars are doing. It’s a protest. I am an anarcho-pacifist punk – so war is the last thing I want being served.

Today, I was confronted by airport security guards about wearing my bullet chain – a chain with some bullet shells on it. They didn’t like it because it might make people feel “uncomfortable.” Here, in captalistic America – it’s not PC to make other people uncomfortable and think. Being that I was in a zone with zero rights, I wasn’t about to explain my position that making people uncomfortable is kind of the idea so maybe they think about what’s going on in the world. That war is real and not just something you hear about on television. Anyways, the guards let me go with my chain as long as I agreed to be censored and keep the harmless bits of metal in my pocket since someone might be upset by it. What happened to my freedom of expression?