What We've Become

Living and Dying in a Country of Arms

6 January 2026

Territory Rights — Worldwide.

Description

A searing reflection on the broken promise of safety in America

Jonathan M. Metzl has long been the forefront of a movement advocating for American gun reform as a matter of public health but in 2018 a racially charged mass shooting in Nashville led him on a path towards recognising the limitations of biomedical frameworks for fully diagnosing or treating the complexities of American gun politics. In What We’ve Become, Metzl looks at the cycle in which mass shootings lead to shock, horror, calls for action, and, ultimately, political gridlock, he explores what happens when violence is normalised as an acceptable trade-off for freedom. What We’ve Become points to mass shootings as a symptom of America’s unresolved national conflicts, and sets out a path of alliance forging, racial reckoning and political power brokering that America must take to put things right.

Reviews

"We’ve arrived at this critical moment, when we seem willingly to bear the lost lives of many thousands so that a minority of our citizens may buy, carry, sell, trade, exhibit, gift and shoot lethal weaponry... [Metzl] acknowledges the crosshatch of laws that keep guns flowing across state borders. He casts a wide net." — Rachel Louise Snyder, The New York Times Book Review

"I know of few other thinkers who so consistently diagnose what ails America. This is the clarion call to everyone who professes concern about the state of guns in this country. If we stand a chance in hell of fighting back and remaking American in the image of gun safety, we need this book now!" — Michael Eric Dyson, The New York Times best-selling author of Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

Paperback

9781324117667

140 x 210 mm • 384 pages

£14.99

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Ebook

9781324050261

£22.99

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