Guns across America

Robert Spitzer (SUNY Cortland), Guns Across America (Oxford University Press, 2015).

"As Robert J. Spitzer demonstrates in Guns across America, gun ownership is as old as the nation, but so is gun regulation. Drawing on a vast new dataset of early gun laws reflecting every imaginable type of regulation, Spitzer reveals that firearms were actually more strictly regulated in the country's first three centuries than in recent years. The first 'gun grabbers' were not 1960's Chablis-drinking liberals, but seventeenth century rum-guzzling pioneers, and their legacy continued through strict gun regulations in the 1920s and beyond. Spitzer examines interpretations of the Second Amendment, the assault weapons controversy, modern 'stand your ground' laws, and the so-called 'right of rebellion' to show that they play out in America's contemporary political landscape in ways that bear little resemblance to our imagined past." 
—Publisher’s description