Those of you who have read the scintillating book Freakonomics know that if you have a swimming pool in your backyard and a gun in your house, the swimming pool is 100 times more likely to kill your child than your gun. Hard to believe for many who oppose having guns in the home, but apparently true. Yet with the recent massacre at Virginia Tech, debate over gun control legislation has again taken front stage.

While this blog is not really the place to voice my opinions about gun control, it is a place for me to point out some of the library's books on gun-related topics. Sure enough, we have a few new additions to the collection that I thought you might find interesting. So here they are along with excerpts from book reviews or jacket cover summaries.

Gun show nation : gun culture and American democracy / Joan Burbick.
"Tenaciously exposing the role guns play for many Americans in their national and political identity, Burbick (Rodeo Queens and the American Dream) talks to gun owners, sellers, lobbyists, grassroots organizers and policy makers as she tours gun shows, gun-rights conventions and National Rifle Association gatherings across the land. Mining the history of gun manufacturing and shooting magazine editorials, she charts how the gun industry has successfully marketed its products using the image of the patriotic, law-abiding civilian shooter. She describes Civil War–era white fears of armed blacks and shows how the Second Amendment rights movement was born of the social unrest of the 1960s." Publisher's Weekly Review

The global war on guns : inside the U.N. plan to destroy the Bill of Rights / Wayne LaPierre.
"In July 2001, the United Nations hosted a bonfire, but they weren't roasting marshmallows-they were burning piles of guns seized from the citizens of member nations. There's perhaps no better picture of what the UN thinks of private gun ownership, and in the summer of 2006, the gun-destroyers will be at it again, when the UN re-confers about regulating gun possession, pushing for an international criminal court that would usurp U.S. sovereignty and open the door for global arms-controllers to finally enforce their anti-gun agenda. In this vital book, LaPierre sounds the alarm, reveals the secrets, and shows the path back to freedom, national sovereignty, and independence." Book Summary

Her best shot : women and guns in America / Laura Browder.
Exploring "the social meanings of armed womanhood in a culture where violence is associated with masculinity...In Her Best Shot, Laura Browder examines the relationship between women and guns and the ways in which the figure of the armed woman has served as a lightning rod for cultural issues...Utilizing autobiographies, advertising, journalism, novels, and political tracts, among other sources, Browder traces appearances of the armed woman across a chronological spectrum from the American Revolution to the present and an ideological spectrum ranging from the Black Panthers to right-wing militias."