The American gun control debate is best understood as a battle in a war over the influence of individualism on American culture, politics, and policy. This book demonstrates that the gun debate is fundamentally about values. Specifically, it is about what we value most: private rights, or the public good. This helps explain why the technical, empirical, or legalistic arguments we hear aren’t persuasive. A review of scholarly literature on both the politics of gun control and American political culture finds an American bias toward an individualism that embraces personal rights. We argue...

The American gun control debate is best understood as a battle in a war over the influence of individualism on American culture, politics, and policy. This book demonstrates that the gun debate is fundamentally about values. Specifically, it is about what we value most: private rights, or the public good. This helps explain why the technical, empirical, or legalistic arguments we hear aren’t persuasive. A review of scholarly literature on both the politics of gun control and American political culture finds an American bias toward an individualism that embraces personal rights. We argue...