Gunfight

I admire this book for its measured erudition on a topic (guns) that the author feels is the most formative cultural chasm in the US. Winkler, a renowned legal scholar, uses the 2008 Supreme Court Heller decision that enshrined the second amendment as an individual right to bear arms as the touchstone for a riveting and more wide-ranging investigation of the history of gun rights as well as gun control laws. Winkler finds historical precedents for the concept of an individual right (if not a mandate, in some cases) to bear arms.

However, what I found most surprising is Winkler’s… show more.

Heller v. District of Columbia may have been brought by one Washington police officer challenging a local law that prohibited him from keeping a working handgun in his home. But as Gunfight demonstrates, the outcome before the Supreme Court was one “the gun rights movement long hoped for.” Winkler shows how a 1977 coup within the National Rifle Association transformed a group founded by Civil War veterans to teach marksmanship and gun safety into a civil-liberties organization dedicated to an absolutist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. By the time Heller reached the Supreme Court in 2008, what would have once… show more.