What We've Become
Living and Dying in a Country of Arms
6 January 2026
Territory Rights — Worldwide.
Description
An urgent wake-up call about the future of gun safety reform in America
An expert at the forefront of a movement advocating for gun reform as a matter of public health, doctor and gun policy scholar, Jonathan M. Metzl has been on media call in the aftermath of fatal shootings.
When a mentally ill white man killed four young adults of colour at a Waffle House, Metzl once again advocated for common-sense gun reform. But as he peeled back evidence surrounding the shooting, a shocking question emerged: Did the approach he championed have it all wrong? These killings led him on a path toward recognising the limitations of biomedical frameworks for fully diagnosing or treating the impassioned complexities of American gun politics.
This brilliant, piercing analysis shows mass shootings as a symptom of America’s most unresolved national conflicts. What We've Become sets America on the path of alliance-forging, racial-reckoning and political power-brokering that must be taken 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
Ebook
9781324050261
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£21.83
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