"A Smart if Occasionally Frustrating Historical Overview of America's 200-Plus Year Relationship with Guns"

"This is the puzzle of the 2nd Amendment, which, Waldman admits, is a problematic text at best. 'Let's be clear,' he writes: 'the eloquent men who wrote "we the people" and the First Amendment did us no favors in the drafting of the Second Amendment.' By way of explanation, he takes us on a looping ride from the colonial era, when gun ownership was not only common but also, in many cases, compelled because of the militias, to our own post-Sandy Hook America, in which 'Second Amendment fundamentalism rests powerfully on the idea that an empowered individual—armed to protect himself (gender definitely intended) and his family—is the morally virtuous way to live.'
"The movement he traces is a key one: from the people (as a group) to people, from defense of the homeland to defense of the home."


In the Los Angeles Times, David L. Ulin reviews Michael Waldman's The Second Amendment: A Biography.