Guns and Why Americans are Crazy for Them

Gladwell, Malcolm.  The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic.  New York: 

         Little, Brown and Company, 2026.  ISBN: 9780316603782

 

 

Do you have an opinion regarding the amount of gun violence there is in the United States?  Do you have any idea on how the United States treated gun violence in the past?  Do you have opinions on the absurd gun laws on the books now and court rulings?  Malcolm Gladwell addresses these questions and more in The American Way of Killing!

 

Malcolm Gladwell opens the book with an interview of a Chicago ER doctor who had grown up in Chicago.  He had lost 15 close friends or family member to gun violence by the time he was 30 years old who has to teach 4th graders how to deal with gunshot wounds.  Gladwell then pivots to difference in murder rates in the United States versus Canada and Europe. He wants to figure out why the United States is such an outlier on gun violence.

 

Part One: Dishonest Conversations has three chapters.  "A Shooting Lesson" starts with the difference between crime and violence and the difference in what harm different guns do. "The Slave Owner's Lament" covers the motivation and writing style of the writers (principally James Madison) of the 2nd Amendment to the U. S. Constitution and the slippery slope the Supreme Court has been skirting in a number of cases.  "The Cornwell Effect" looks at the amount of practice ER and trauma surgeons get on gun shot wounds and how their skill disguises the damage that gun violence does to society.

 

Part Two: Misdiagnosis also has three chapters.  "The Quarrel Was About A Very Trivial Thing" discuses what we get wrong about why and how various crimes happen and how/why the U.S. justice approach does not work.  "Zero. Zero. It's Not Gonna Happen" discusses the number of police in U.S. cities versus European cities and how this plays out in relation to the amount of criminal cases solved.  "Becoming a Man" examines how emotional management training can play a part in crime reduction.

 

Part Three: Moral Absurdity has two chapters.  "Nobody Appears to Have Liked Sir John Knight" is a deep dive into The Sullivan Act and the legal hoops the Supreme Court jumped through to repeal it.  "The Footnote" is a look at the inequalities in regard to who dies from violence in the United States.

 

The epilogue - "Getting Outta Dodge" - is a rereading of how folks out West dealt with gun violence.  They banned the guns.  The epilogue is also a summarization of all the points made earlier in the book.

 

If you are interested in learning why the United States is such an outlier among civilized countries in regard to violence, pick up this book, read it, and share it!