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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Gun Culture 2.0 
David,
I have not read this book, but your assessment is, essentially, similar to what Tom Grisham said about it. Sounds like it proves to be an agenda driven missed opportunity. Thanks for reviewing it-
Salvatore
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Getting someone in favor of banning ‘assault weapons’ to actually engage in conversation, is a rare thing. (Although that holds true for nearly every contentious issue nowadays.)
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Looking forward to the review, David.
Seems from your discussion here that the book uses the Overextended Outrage fallacy to make its narrative. To wit, from the fallacy description web page (below), “This is a form of poor statistical thinking where one or more statistically rare cases are implied to be the norm or the trend (without evidence) for the purpose of expressing or inciting outrage toward an entire group. It is a form of extreme stereotyping (the fallacy), based on the cognitive bias known as the group attribution error.”
(ref: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Overextended-Outrage )
I know a lot of AR owners at the club. Another is my brother in NC, who is so true blue that President Obama once nominated him for a Federal position. None of us fit the Crazy Right Wing Always Carry It In Walmart skit.
One could certainly have a more nuanced view of the AR owner. There is a large group of folks who simply like to shoot military style weapons, which is a reason that the Civilian Marksmanship Program has such an easy time selling 1911’s and M-1’s and one reason, but perhaps not the only reason, people buy these rifles. But given that population, one can reference the risk assessment matrix, which looks at likelihood vs impact. A mass shooter might be extremely rare, but has severe impact.
So the argument for discussing the AR owner and whether regulating these firearms is or is not a good idea is not because of the very typical owner who is of negligible risk and just likes to shoot the damn thing, but the very unlikely owner who constitutes severe risk. Thus, not tarring all of us (including yours truly) with the mass shooter brush but still trying to negotiate fair treatment given the unlikely but severe cases.
It is kind of how we did hazard analysis back when I was a lead scientist in a nuclear facility, so I am aware of how it is done. Doing it carefully is the trick.
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And note David’s recent post if you missed it.
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