How America Got Its Guns: A History of the Gun Violence Crisis

How America Got Its Guns: A History of the Gun Violence Crisis. By William Briggs. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017. ix + 322 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 paper.

With shelves groaning under the weight of books on firearms violence and policy, a new effort needs strong justification. William Briggs, emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Colorado, Denver, offers a personalized crack at the forces behind America's gun debates. The book is written as a kind of bildungsroman, as Briggs learns about gun policy and history, stressing the "the history of gun laws and court cases and the tortured compromises that led to major legislation and court decisions" (7). More than half the book is devoted to the constitutional law of civilian guns. It is a fine review, impressively cautious about unknowns like the Founders' original intent.

Briggs's perspective is guided by equivalency. Gun and gun control advocates, "both sides in the modern gun debate . . . use their own versions of history" (7). Here Briggs...