Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
When a naked, mentally ill white man with an AR-15 killed four young adults of color at a nearby Waffle House, Nashville-based physician and gun policy scholar Jonathan M. Metzl once again advocated for commonsense gun reform. But as he peeled back evidence surrounding the racially charged mass shooting, a shocking question emerged: Did the approach he championed have it all wrong?
Long a leading expert at the forefront of a movement advocating for gun reform as a matter of public health, Metzl has been on constant media call in the aftermath of fatal shootings. But the 2018 Nashville killings led him on a path toward recognizing the limitations of biomedical frameworks for treating the impassioned complexities of American gun politics. This brilliant, piercing analysis shows mass shootings as a symptom of our most unresolved national conflicts. Metzl ultimately sets us on the path of alliance-forging, racial-reckoning, and political power-brokering we must take to put things right.