A Brief Review of “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15” (Light Over Heat #69)

As I race to finish the manuscript for my book, Gun Curious, I spent 7 precious days revising the chapter on “Living with AR-15s.” In truth, I spent 4 days reading and thinking about a new book on The True Story of the AR-15 and 3 days revising my own take.

I had finished a complete draft earlier in the year and circulated it to a couple of friends for feedback, including one who is very much on the side of banning “assault weapons.” This feedback was really helpful in understanding how my work will be received by an audience I sincerely hope will read the book (gun skeptics) and some points I needed to clarify for their sake.

Between finishing that draft and doing the revision, some other things happened that influenced my revision. Another two high-profile civilian mass public shooters used AR-pattern rifles, at The Covenant School in Nashville (7 killed, 1 injured) in March and at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas (9 killed, 7 injured) in May. I also attended two events in June at which “assault weapons” were discussed, a firearm law works-in-progress workshop sponsored by the University of Wyoming Firearm Research Center and Duke Center for Firearms Law and a Vail Symposium conversation on gun violence.

Most recently, while I was browsing bookstores to help brainstorm subtitles for Gun Curious, I saw that a long-awaited book on the AR-15 by two Wall Street Journal reporters, Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, had finally been published. Coming in at 380 pages of text, it was a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because I knew it would give me material for my own chapter (I ended up citing it 11 times). It was a curse because the timing could not have been worse. I had allocated 4 days in total to revise my chapters, but it would take me 2 days just to read the book and 2 days to digest it.

To help my digestion, I started writing a review of the book. I ended up writing 5,000-words, which I pared back to a mere 4,400. While that review is in the hands of a potential publisher, I recorded a “brief” summary of my thoughts on the book for “Light Over Heat” last week. I put brief in scare quotes because the review itself is about 11 minutes long.

My TL:DR is that the book should have been titled, The AR-15: From Stoner to School Shootings. The authors address Stoner’s design, the military’s adoption, and mass murders’ use of the AR-15 well. But they do not do justice to the true story of why normal people own and use these guns to do normal things.

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