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Advance praise for The Last Gun:
“Through a gripping narrative that combines plenty of factual data with compelling storytelling, Diaz makes the convincing case that the gun industry is knowingly trading American lives for profits. . . . Never one to pull his punches, he methodically identifies the gun industry’s enablers, including politicians, lobbyists, and members of the media. After the tragedy of Newtown, if you are going to read one book to understand the current political fight in Washington, this is it.”
—Joshua Horwitz, executive director, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
“To understand what needs to be done to end America’s sickening, preventable epidemic of gun violence, read this book. Fast-paced and absorbing, The Last Gun reads like a political thriller. But it’s also a definitive, fascinating exploration of solutions to a problem—literally the arming of America by a mercenary gun industry—that every parent and every citizen has reason to fear, regardless of where you live or how much money you earn. Diaz, a Washington insider, has written a brave and important book—and, coming on the heels of the massacre of twenty elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut, none too soon. If there’s one book you want to read about the gun issue, this is it.”
—Ellen Freudenheim, MPH, co-founder and director of Silent March, the “shoes” campaign against gun violence
“In his eminently readable style, mixing science and anecdote, Tom Diaz shows how our leaders have created gun policies that are good for the gun industry but horrific for our nation. He also describes ‘solutions worthy of the name.’ What a timely book!”
—David Hemenway, professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center
“Tom Diaz is one of the most insightful observers of the gun industry and the larger gun debate in America today because he lets his evidence do the talking. He writes with a point of view, but that viewpoint is powerfully shaped by the prodigious evidence he brings to bear regarding how the gun industry markets its products and how that marketing perpetuates some of the cartoonish stereotypes that typify the gun debate. As Diaz’s riveting and revealing analysis shows, the gun industry’s own marketing strategies reveal that their interest has nothing to do with the Second Amendment and everything to do with selling more guns.”
—Robert J. Spitzer, author of The Politics of Gun Control
“Tom Diaz writes with authority about the ongoing danger of Americans’ obsessions with guns. The Last Gun combines riveting anecdotes of firearm violence with evidence on availability and risk of personal arsenals. Diaz offers rational approaches to thwart the epidemic of these weapons of mass destruction.”
—Jerome P. Kassirer, MD, Distinguished Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine, and editor-in-chief emeritus, New England Journal of Medicine
“Diaz knows his subject inside and out and, like the prophets of old, hurls his arguments from the mountaintop with terrible precision. . . . America has allowed itself to become a grand bazaar in fearsome military-grade weaponry, which the governing class is only now—more than a decade after 9/11—beginning to acknowledge as a major domestic security threat. The Last Gun lays out the blood-soaked cost of such folly and the urgent need for corrective action.”
—Andrew Gumbel, journalist and author of Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed—And Why It Still Matters
“Diaz is a relentless investigator and a compelling writer. . . . His inferences are carefully drawn and very well supported, and their implications are clear. . . . Anyone who wants to help prevent firearm-related violence, in the United States and elsewhere, should read this excellent book.”
—Garen Wintemute, MD, professor, UC Davis School of Medicine, and director, Violence Prevention Research Program
“Diaz once again reveals what the firearms-industrial complex doesn’t want the public to know, while refusing to spare politicians and the media for their complicity in the cover-up. . . . This book should be required reading for policymakers at every level and for every American fed up with the massacre of thirty thousand people a year.”
—Andrew Fois, Deputy Attorney General, Public Safety Division, Washington, D.C.
The Last Gun
How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It
hardcover
$26.95
From the influential gun control advocate and author, a startling new analysis of guns and gun violence—in a book that shows the path to a safer future
Newtown, Connecticut. Aurora, Colorado. Both have entered our collective memory as sites of unimaginable heartbreak and mass slaughter, perpetrated by lone gunmen. Meanwhile, cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C. are dealing with the painful, everyday reality of record rates of gun-related deaths. By any account, gun violence in the United States has reached epidemic proportions: we are by far the most armed nation on earth, and we have the deaths to show for it. But how did we get here, and where do we go next?
In The Last Gun, Tom Diaz lays out a lucid, incisive account of why we are facing this epidemic—and what we can do to stop it. A widely respected activist and policy analyst—as well as a former gun enthusiast and ex-member of the National Rifle Association—Diaz presents a chilling, up-to-date survey of the changed landscape of gun manufacturing and marketing. The Last Gun explores how the gun industry has shifted dramatically in the last decade and how the nature of gun violence has changed in step with industry trends, including the disturbing rise in the military-grade gun models that have brought us to a numbing new level of violence. But Diaz also argues that the once formidable gun lobby has become a “paper tiger,” marshaling a range of stunning evidence and case studies to eloquently make the case that now is the time for a renewed political effort to attack gun violence at its source—the guns themselves. Because, despite all the rhetoric, guns do kill people.
In the aftermath of Newtown, a challenging national conversation lies ahead. The Last Gun is an indispensable guide to this debate, and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we can finally rid America’s streets, schools, and homes of gun violence and prevent future Newtowns.
Tom Diaz is a writer, lawyer, and public speaker on the gun industry and gun control. Formerly senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, he has been featured on MSNBC, NPR, and other national media. His books include Making a Killing (The New Press). He lives in Washington, D.C.
Spring 2013
hardcover
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 336 pages
978-1-59558-830-2
hardcover
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 336 pages
978-1-59558-830-2
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