Honestly

I read Malcolm Gladwell's new book, The American Way of Killing. Put simply, it's an indictment of what Mr. Gladwell understands to be the fundamental dishonesty, as he puts it, that's baked into the discourse concerning guns, violence and crime here in the United States. And it's fine, for what it is. As a Canadian, Mr. Gladwell hopes to bring something of an outsider's perspective to the discussion, which he does.

When I bought the book, the manager at Barnes and Noble, who is an old acquaintance of mine, told me that The American Way of Killing lacks the neutrality of Mr. Gladwell's earlier books. Having only read Talking to Strangers, I can't say for certain that it's true, but I do note a difference in tone. Mainly because Mr. Gladwell seems angered by the whole business; I came away from The American Way of Killing with the sense that Mr. Gladwell felt that, even of the dishonesty in the discourse was not always intentional, it was always culpable, and Americans bore responsibility for it. Which I get.

But I think, in that regard, that perhaps it would have been worthwhile to delve more deeply into the fear, mistrust and tribalism that underlies the dishonesty. For example, I am of the opinion that people are motivated to support "assault weapon" bans not only out of misunderstanding the relative dangerousness of the weapons (and Mr. Gladwell does devote some page space to a deception that fuels that misunderstanding), but also because they understand the weapons as a means in which people bring lethal violence into places where it's not supposed to be. On the other side of the ledger, many conservative gun-rights activists come across as motivated by the tripartite nature of current conservative populism; their guns are a defense against both hostile élites taking over government to use it against them and the undeserving others who prefer robbery and theft to honest work.

In other words, for me, the problem is that old villain of mine, low (or nonexistent) social trust, and the prices that people are willing to impose on those they mistrust for their own sense of security. In the end, I didn't find The American Way of Killing to be a bad book; I certainly learned some interesting things from it. But I think that it views the dysfunction in the way Americans talk about guns, violence, crime et cetera as a cause, and not also as an effect. So I'm not sure that there's a good way to take any solutions away from it.