One Nation Under Guns

Starred review from November 1, 2023
A corrective consideration of the right to bear arms. Erdozain delivers a formidable and timely argument: Contrary to the claims of contemporary gun rights advocates, the founders of the U.S. feared the prospect of armed individuals, and the Second Amendment was crafted to guarantee the existence of a supervised collective force rather than the rights of individual gun owners. The author delivers an illuminating survey of American gun culture, locating its origins in the institution of slavery and its gradual adoption of a dangerously fervent and often overtly racist nationalism. Along the way, Erdozain systematically exposes popular claims about gun rights as "an American birthright" as "a false and fabricated history." The author demonstrates that a careful, honest, historically informed reading of the Constitution and Bill of Rights reveals an unambiguous intention to protect the nation from predictable excesses of personal liberty. Freedom would depend on restricting weaponry to government control. Among the many strengths of this book is the author's incisive commentary on the catastrophic failure of legislative safeguards, especially in the last two decades. The inadequacy of the nation's response to massive and routine gun violence has only become more pronounced during this time, the author argues persuasively, as attitudes of self-righteousness among gun owners are fueled by misunderstandings of both history and the lethal consequences of gun ownership. The most striking chapter comes, however, in a closely argued, withering analysis of the 2008 Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller, which seemed to willfully misread historical context in its ratification of personal gun rights. As dismal as Erdozain's conclusions about the fate of gun regulation are, he nevertheless affirms, with some plausibility, his hope that the nation might "reclaim the concept of freedom from the weapons and the values that violate it." A profound demolition of misguided gun-rights arguments and a compelling call to action.

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December 1, 2023

Historian Erdozain (Emory Univ.; The Soul of Doubt) makes a bracingly simple argument: the narrative that gun rights are an American birthright is a fabrication. He takes readers on a tour through the history and public discourse surrounding gun control, from the 18th-century Enlightenment and the American Revolution to the present day. He marshals powerful arguments that the Second Amendment's "right to keep and bear arms" belonged to "the people" purely in their collective capacity as a "well-regulated militia." But over time, racial paranoia, "honor" culture, nationalism, and the U.S. frontier mythos transformed firearms into symbols of manly virtue and individual liberty. Even so, 19th- and 20th-century public discourse and case law mostly backed gun control. Then, in 2008's District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court resorted to what Erdozain calls "a false and invented history" to overturn centuries of legal precedent and popular support for gun control. VERDICT A fast-paced, reader-friendly polemic that demolishes gun-culture myths. Will attract many readers.--Michael Rodriguez

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2023
How did the Second Amendment come to be read as a full-throated endorsement of unregulated, unlimited gun ownership? Religious historian Erdozain attempts to answer that question by tracing the history of gun rhetoric, law, and legislation from the Founders to the present day. The book stumbles when it attempts to explain why America is so uniquely wedded to its guns--Erdozain argues that slavery is the original sin of gun culture but seems to dismiss the genocide of Native nations as belonging to a separate, more "controlled" category of violence with a far lesser impact on present-day attitudes toward guns. The chapters dedicated to the rise of the NRA, with its implacable lobbying power, are far more strongly argued, as Erdozain methodically unpicks the misleading and downright false claims made by supporters of gun rights, from NRA officials to the justices who sit on the highest court of the land. In a country where mass shootings have become commonplace, One Nation under Guns is a damning reminder that it didn't have to be this way.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.