"[C]ommunities living with guns at their epicentres often lay far removed from other communities with guns. Gun lobbyists never got shot at, American hunters don't meet Salvadoran gangland killers. Gun makers focused on the minutiae of a barrel's width, while doctors frantically focused on stemming the blood from the imprecise holes caused by a bullet's spin," explains British investigative journalist Iain Overton as he brings together the results of his global study of the firearm "from its metallic cradle to its blood-tinged grave."
The Way of the Gun is the culmination of Overton's extraordinary efforts to understand humanity's relationship with weapons. The former head of a gun club, Overton traveled around the world--including war-torn areas like Palestine and ganglands like El Salvador--to examine the gun as an instrument of pain, power, pleasure and profit, with a special emphasis on the world's largest manufacturing country, the United States.
Steeped in research, data and first-hand observations, The Way of the Gun provides a window into this deadly sphere. Overton's efforts to touch every aspect of the gun--from creation, to use, even lobbying--and his desire to understand the viewpoints opposite his own make this a compelling and comprehensive analysis. Meanwhile, Overton's perspective from outside the U.S. political divide offers readers a glimpse of how one country's ideology can profoundly affect all other countries.
Persuasive and graceful, The Way of the Gun peers down the dark barrel in a search for hope. If readers peer back, that hope might be just be possible. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts