Synopses & Reviews
Newtown, Connecticut. Aurora, Colorado. Both have entered our collective memory as sites of unimaginable heartbreak and mass slaughter perpetrated by lone gunmen. Meanwhile, cities such as 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.
A widely respected activist and policy analyst—as well as a former gun enthusiast and an ex-member of the National Rifle Association—Tom 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 and the nature of gun violence have changed, including the disturbing rise in military-grade gun models. But Diaz also argues that the once formidable gun lobby has become a "paper tiger," marshaling a range of evidence and case studies to make the case that now is the time for a renewed political effort to attack gun violence at its source—the guns themselves.
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 Americas streets, schools, and homes of gun violence and prevent future Newtowns.
Review
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 industrys 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 Americas sickening, preventable epidemic of gun violence, read this book. Fast-paced and absorbing, The Last Gun reads like a political thriller. But its also a definitive, fascinating exploration of solutions to a problemliterally the arming of America by a mercenary gun industrythat 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 bookand, coming on the heels of the massacre of twenty elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut, none too soon. If theres 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 Diazs riveting and revealing analysis shows, the gun industrys 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 nowmore than a decade after 9/11beginning 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 MissedAnd 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 doesnt 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 Fios, Attorney General, Public Safety Division, Washington, D.C.
Review
"In his eminently readable style, mixing science and anecdote, 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, Harvard School of Public Health
"Diaz once again reveals what the firearms-industrial complex doesnt 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 policy makers at every level and for every American fed up with the massacre of 30,000 people a year."
Andrew Fois, Deputy Attorney General, Public Safety Division, Washington, D.C.
"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
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
Synopsis
Tom Diaz is a former gun enthusiast and an ex-member of the National Rifle Association whose first book,
Making a Killing, is widely considered to be the most influential antigun book ever written. Its publication helped to spark a national media campaign around the machinations of the gun industry and the wave of gun violence it spawned.
Picking up where Making a Killing left off, The Last Gun looks at how the gun industry has changed dramatically in the intervening decade, how the nature of gun violence has changed in step with industry trends, and why the time is ripe for a new political effort to attack gun violence at its source: the guns themselves.
In The Last Gun, Diaz offers a chilling, up-to-date survey of the changed landscape of gun manufacturing and marketing, including the disturbing trend toward military-grade, high-powered gun models and the latest statistics on how these more powerful guns have enabled new levels of gun violence to crest. The Last Gun shows how the once-impregnable gun lobby has become a “paper tiger,” reviewing recent legislative and judicial developments, as well as important local case studies, to show that now is the time for a renewed effort to bring a fundamentally corrupt and dangerous industry to heel.
About the Author
Tom Diaz is a writer, lawyer, and public speaker on the gun industry and gun control issues. Formerly a senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, he has been featured on MSNBC, on NPR, and in other national media. His books include
Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America (The New Press), and he is currently working on a book about his family and American immigration policy. He lives in Washington, D.C.