Malcolm Gladwell thinks everything you know about gun violence is probably wrong

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Set us as preferred On the Shelf The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic By Malcolm Gladwell Little Brown & Co.: 304 pages, $34If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.The federal government’s understanding (or misunderstanding, according to bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell) of the 2nd Amendment all begins with the tale of a rabble-rousing 17th century English nobleman.In 1686, at least one now contested-account recounts the story of Sir John Knight, a devout anti-Catholic, busting into the church of St.

Michael in Bristol, England, during services with a gun.His aim? To terrify the King’s subjects.

In 2022, more than three centuries later, United States Supreme Court justices used Knight’s acquittal by a jury to take it that the Founding Fathers, who were influenced by English law when drafting the Constitution, were not opposed to the carrying of guns in public for self-defense.This type of logic, which determines the law of the land by interpreting obscure bits of history over utilizing common sense, is what Gladwell calls “bananas.”In his recently released ninth book, “The American Way of Killing,” Gladwell does what he does well.

He digs into a topic, in this case gun violence in America, illuminating unexpected causes and prodding at assumptions that perpetuate what he refers to as a gun violence “epidemic.” The premise is that this epidemic can, in large part, be tied to what he calls a “dishonest conversation.”“You’re not dealing with the problem as it is,” he says matter of factly, sitting under an olive tree at a cafe in East Hollywood on an unusually scorching fall day.Today, he’s the California version of himself, having traded in his perfectly-pressed New Yorker butto...