EDMUND BURKEWith interest in gun control and policy running high and many serious people wanting to better understand the issue, I thought I’d list what, in my judgment, are the best half-dozen books in the field. To make this list, a book must be well-informed, enlightening, well-written and accessible to the lay reader. Even excellent books aren’t included if a reader must be well-versed in statistics to understand them. I have also limited this list to books about gun policy, omitting those dealing with related topics such as the Second Amendment, the firearm industry, or NRA. I list the books not by rank – they all are first-rate – but in reverse chronological order. The title of each book is linked to its page at the Barnes & Noble website.
- Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis (Daniel W. Webster & Jon S. Vernick eds. 2013). This book – which comes from a gun policy summit convened by the Center for Guns Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health following the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut – contains nineteen short chapters that span a wide spectrum of issues, by leading researchers who describe some of their latest findings.
- The Politics of Gun Control by Robert J. Spitzer (5th ed. 2012). Spitzer, a political scientist at SUNY-Cortland, designed his book both as a college text and as a primer and reference for general readers.
- Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy by Dennis A. Henigan (2009). Henigan was vice president for law and policy – and for a period of time, acting president – of the Brady Campaign. Each of his chapters responds to a NRA slogan, e.g., “Guns Don’t Kill People. People Kill People,” “When Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns.” As someone who engaged in many debates, Henigan understands what general readers want to know. This is a lively, as well as an informative, read.
- Private Guns, Public Health by David Hemenway (2006). Hemenway, and economist and one of the leading researchers in the field, directs the Injury Control Center at the Harvard University School of Public Health. This sophisticated work presents a comprehensive overview of what we have learned about gun policy from the work of all major researchers, including Hemenway himself.
- Every Handgun is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns (2001). Sugarmann is founder and head of the Violence Policy Center, a gun-control advocacy organization that specializes in conducting and publishing careful studies. Sugarmann makes an unabashed argument for banning handguns. Although, in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court declared a handgun ban to be unconstitutional, this book still provides a clear and concise overview of the gun issue. (Sugarmann is also author of the best history of the NRA.)
- Crime is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins (1999). Zimring, a law professor at Berkeley, and Hawkins, a researcher there, persuasively argue that America does not have higher crime rates than other wealthy nations, but does have far higher rates of lethal violence because of the greater prevalence of guns.