Gun Politics in America: Historical and Modern Documents in Context. By Harry L. Wilson. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2016. 2 vols. Acid free $189 (ISBN 978-1-4408-3728-9).
Gun Politics in America: Historical and Modern Documents in Context is an affordable two-volume set comprised of eight chapters ranging from the early eighteenth century to President Obama’s first term. Each chapter is made up of about fifteen primary source documents covering major periods in firearms and politics in the United States, with 134 sources total. In addition, each chapter has a roughly ten-page introduction that provides an overview of the social and cultural climate of the period covered by the chapter, with the focus on how the period connects with gun control and the politics surrounding firearms. The chapter introductions do an excellent job of connecting themes in gun control such as race relations, crime rates, organized crime, drugs, and other specific issues related to gun control such as the right to self-defense and concealed carrying of firearms. Each primary source document is prefaced by a short, two-to-three-paragraph introduction, which provides the reader with enough information to comprehend the document in both its historical context and connect the document to other major issues within gun politics. For example, the 1938 Federal Firearms Act is identified as the “emergence of the NRA as an important player in the legislative arena” (144). The first volume also provides a chronology of gun control politics in the United States so that readers can quickly track the major events from the late seventeenth century to 2014.
Editor Harry L. Wilson, chair of the Public Affairs Department and director for Institute for Policy and Opinion Research, Roanoke College, does a fine job making the primary source documents relate to major issues in gun control, and his selection of documents is comprehensive without being overwhelming. The documents are also quite varied, ranging from national legislation, local ordinances and laws, court cases, speeches, and important accounts. Wilson also recently released the monograph, The Triumph of the Gun-Rights Argument: Why the Gun Control Debate is Over (ABC-CLIO 2016), and in 2007 authored Guns, Gun Control, and Elections: the Politics and Policy of Firearms (Rowman and Littlefield).
Gun Politics in America: Historical and Modern Documents in Context is one of several reference works published in the last five years covering gun politics in the United States. Some examples of good works within the past five years are Gun Control and Gun Rights, 2nd Ed., edited by Glenn Utter (Grey House 2011), which is a solid reference work covering a variety of gun related topics. Additionally, Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law, 2nd ed, edited by Gregg Lee Carter (ABC-CLIO 2012) is a comprehensive and quality three-volume set that covers most issues related to guns in the United States, for which Harry L. Wilson authored twelve entries and was an editorial board member. The inexpensive single-volume The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press 2014) edited by P. J. Cook and K. A. Goss provides a well-researched, but brief introduction to guns in the United States. What sets Gun Politics in America: Historical and Modern Documents in Context apart is the connection between primary source documents, cultural and political context contemporary to the document, as well as the connection to major historical issues in gun control politics. The selection and presentation of the documents allows the reader to fully experience how gun politics has progressed in the past three centuries without losing sight of the history or the present.
Highly recommended for all libraries.—Shannon Pritting, Library Director, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Utica, New York