Customer Reviews

Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

On June 26, 2008 the Supreme Court addressed the country's debate on the right to bear arms, deciding that the right still applied to individuals - and ending the District's handgun ban. GUN CONTROL ON TRIAL comes from a journalist who probes the case and its results, offering behind-the-scenes insight on the legal, scientific and historical debates and the myths about gun control that have permeated the case. Any high school to college-level collection strong in social issues will find here perfect material for classroom debate.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

As a NRA member, I was shocked to read about how little the NRA had to do with the Heller case!
Although I don't totally agree with the CATO Institute all the time (Libertarian Ideologues), they really came through for us law abiding gun owners.
Now, unfortunately, the NRA is running with the Heller case results as if they had something to do with it.
This is a good book to learn what really happened and why.

This book is short but packed with the important details of the issues, the people, and the trial itself. It is accessible for the layman but not lightweight: a quick, fun read on what was arguably the most important Supreme Court decision of this century. While the author is not shy with his own opinion he is not overbearing or overheated as too much of Second Amendment discourse has been.

Interesting reading that gives the facts on attempts to control people outside the scope of the Bill of Rights.

I thought that this book was very well written. While it is a bit of a dry read the author does a good job of staying generally objective and supporting his arguments with facts. Overall it is an informative book that presents a good case on a position on the controversial issue of gun control in the United States.
Lauren T.

The Heller case is an interesting topic. Unfortunately, this book is superficial, though the case's history is more complete than the discussion of the research on guns and crimes. That information on the relationship between guns and crime is extremely thin and not very useful on the central question of gun free zones such as DC. With so much of the Supreme Court case on gun locks, you would think that there would be some mention of the research on the topic. None of the costs of crime in gun free zones. No serious discussion of how crime rates changed in DC after the ban (except for a sentence that could have been taken from one of my op-eds).

When an author is ideologically committed to a cause -- in this case, unfettered gun ownership -- the product is certain to be biased and incomplete. So it is with this book. As John Lott, Jr. points out in an Amazon review here, the Heller case has a wealth of interesting complexities, one of which is its support for controls on gun ownership, but author Brian Doherty is more interested in preaching a sermon than exploring the issues.