Gun Violence in America

February 26th, 2012 - 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is shot and killed in Florida.  4 years later in June of 2016 there is a shooting at the Pulse Nightclub.  Also in Florida, 6 years after Trayvon Martin's death, a gunman opens fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.  The list of these tragedies goes on.  Here are 10 books on gun violence in America.

#NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line by David Hogg & Lauren Hogg - From two survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting comes a declaration for our times, and an in-depth look at the making of the #NeverAgain movement. On February 14, 2018, seventeen-year-old David Hogg and his fourteen-year-old sister, Lauren, went to school at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, like any normal Wednesday. That day, of course, the world changed. By the next morning, with seventeen classmates and faculty dead, they had joined the leadership of a movement to save their own lives, and the lives of all other young people in America. It's a leadership position they did not seek, and did not want--but events gave them no choice. The morning after the massacre, David Hogg told CNN: "We're children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role. Work together. Get over your politics and get something done." This book is a manifesto for the movement begun that day, one that has already changed America--with voices of a new generation that are speaking truth to power, and are determined to succeed where their elders have failed. With moral force and clarity, a new generation has made it clear that problems previously deemed unsolvable due to powerful lobbies and political cowardice will be theirs to solve. Born just after Columbine and raised amid seemingly endless war and routine active shooter drills, this generation now says, Enough. This book is their statement of purpose, and the story of their lives. It is the essential guide to the #NeverAgain movement.

Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America by Adam Winkler - Gunfight promises to be a seminal work in its examination of America's four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. In the tradition of Gideon's Trumpet, Adam Winkler uses the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation's capital, as a springboard for a groundbreaking historical narrative. From the Founding Fathers and the Second Amendment to the origins of the Klan, ironically as a gun control organization, the debate over guns has always generated controversy. Whether examining the Black Panthers' role in provoking the modern gun rights movement or Ronald Reagan's efforts to curtail gun ownership, Winkler brilliantly weaves together the dramatic stories of gun rights advocates and gun control lobbyists, providing often unexpected insights into the venomous debate that now cleaves our nation.

Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People: And Other Myths About Guns and Gun Control by Dennis Henigan - Debunking the lethal logic behind the pervasive myths that have framed the gun control debate "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." We've all heard these slogans time and again. The result of a targeted marketing effort by the NRA and other pro-gun organizations, these catchphrases have come to define the contemporary gun control debate. Dennis Henigan explodes the misguided thinking at the heart of these pro-gun slogans and dissects their deadly impact on US gun policy in this completely revised and updated edition of his much-praised 2009 hardcover (Lethal Logic, which has never been published in paperback). The gun lobby's remarkable success in infiltrating the gun control lexicon with these catchy slogans has allowed them to block lifesaving gun legislation for decades and gained them unprecedented influence in American politics. In this well-researched but accessible book, Henigan takes the NRA's myths to task and exposes the fallacious thinking behind the gun lobby's bumper-sticker logic.

The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It by Tom Diaz - Tom Diaz's first book, Making a Killing (The New Press, 1999), is widely considered to be the most influential anti-gun book ever written. It helped to spark a national media campaign around the machinations of the gun industry and the wave of violence it spawned. Picking up where Making a Killing left off, The Last Gun looks at how the gun industry has changed in the intervening decade, how gun violence has changed in step with industry trends and why the time is ripe for a new political effort to attack gun violence at its source: the guns themselves.

Parkland: Birth of a Movement by David Cullen - Nineteen years ago, Dave Cullen was among the first to arrive at Columbine High, even before most of the SWAT teams went in. While writing his acclaimed account of the tragedy, he suffered two bouts of secondary PTSD. He covered all the later tragedies from a distance, working with a cadre of experts cultivated from academia and the FBI, but swore he would never return to the scene of a ghastly crime.
But in March 2018, Cullen went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because something radically different was happening. In nearly twenty years witnessing the mass shootings epidemic escalate, he was stunned and awed by the courage, anger, and conviction of the high school's students. Refusing to allow adults and the media to shape their story, these remarkable adolescents took control, using their grief as a catalyst for change, transforming tragedy into a movement of astonishing hope that has galvanized a nation.
Cullen unfolds the story of Parkland through the voices of key participants whose diverse personalities and outlooks comprise every facet of the movement. Instead of taking us into the minds of the killer, he takes us into the hearts of the Douglas students as they cope with the common concerns of high school students everywhere--awaiting college acceptance letters, studying for mid-term exams, competing against their athletic rivals, putting together the yearbook, staging the musical Spring Awakening, enjoying prom and graduation--while moving forward from a horrific event that has altered them forever.
Deeply researched and beautifully told, Parkland is an in-depth examination of this pivotal moment in American culture--and an up-close portrait that reveals what these extraordinary young people are like as kids. As it celebrates the passion of these astonishing students who are making history, this spellbinding book is an inspiring call to action for lasting change.

Rampage Nation: Securing America From Mass Shootings by Louis Klarevas - In the past decade, no individual act of violence has killed more people in the United States than the mass shooting. This well-researched, forcefully argued book answers some of the most pressing questions facing our society: Why do people go on killing sprees? Are gun-free zones magnets for deadly rampages? What can we do to curb the carnage of this disturbing form of firearm violence? Contrary to conventional wisdom, the author shows that gun possession often prods aggrieved, mentally unstable individuals to go on shooting sprees; these attacks largely occur in places where guns are not prohibited by law; and sensible gun-control measures like the federal Assault Weapons Ban--which helped drastically reduce rampage violence when it was in effect--are instrumental to keeping Americans safe from mass shootings in the future. To stem gun massacres, the author proposes several original policy prescriptions, ranging from the enactment of sensible firearm safety reforms to an overhaul of how the justice system investigates potential active-shooter threats and prosecutes violent crimes. Calling attention to the growing problem of mass shootings, Rampage Nation demonstrates that this unique form of gun violence is more than just a criminal justice offense or public health scourge. It is a threat to American security.

Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin by Sybrina Fulton & Tracy Martin - An intimate portrait of Trayvon Martin shares previously untold insights into the movement he inspired from the perspectives of his parents, who also describe their efforts to bring meaning to his short life through the movement's pursuit of redemption and justice.
In alternating chapters, Martin's parents tell of their son's tragically foreshortened life. They provide insights into the cruel unresponsiveness of the police and hostility of the legal system, and describe their efforts to bring meaning, redemption and justice to his short life. Their voices launched a movement that would change the nation.

Stand Your Ground: A History of America's Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense by Caroline Light - After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement-and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for "good guys with guns" relies on the entrenched belief that certain "bad guys with guns" threaten us all.
Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original "duty to retreat" from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America's attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories-from the original "castle laws" of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of "criminal" Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country's most powerful lobbying forces.
In this convincing treatise on the United States' unprecedented ascension as the world's foremost stand-your-ground nation, Light exposes a history hidden in plain sight, showing how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.

Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It by Lisa Bloom - What went wrong behind the scenes in the Trayvon Martin case? Why does America endure so many tragic shootings like this one? These are the questions at the heart of Suspicion Nation.
Bestselling author, trial attorney, and NBC News analyst Lisa Bloom covered the murder trial and was appalled by what she witnessed. Bloom now exposes the injustice, conducting new in-depth interviews with key trial participants and digging deeper into the evidence. Suspicion Nation outlines the six biggest mistakes made by the state of Florida that guaranteed it would lose this "winnable case," and the laws and biases that created the conditions for this tragedy.
The only nonwhite juror tells her story of painful isolation in the jury room. Rachel Jeantel, the state's star witness, reveals how poorly the state prepared her to testify and what went through her mind on the stand. The medical examiner reveals scientific evidence he wasn't allowed to present. And a new examination of Trayvon's school suspensions raises questions about racial profiling, all in a country divided over issues of race, gun laws, and violence.
Suspicion Nation is a riveting courtroom drama that shines a bright light on a case we only thought we knew.

We Say #NeverAgain: Reporting by the Parkland Student Journalists edited by MSD teachers Melissa Falkowski and Eric Garner - A journalistic look at the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and the fight for gun control--as told by the student reporters for the school's newspaper and TV station.
This timely and media-driven approach to the Parkland shooting, as reported by teens in the journalism and broadcasting programs and in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas newspaper, is an inside look at that tragic day and the events that followed that only they could tell.
It showcases how the teens have become media savvy and the skills they have learned and honed--harnessing social media, speaking to the press, and writing effective op-eds. Students will also share specific insight into what it has been like being approached by the press and how that has informed the way they interview their own subjects.