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COPYRIGHT 2001 Canadian Criminal Justice Association
Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America by Tom Diaz. New York: New Press. 1999.
This book makes an enormous contribution to our knowledge about the enigmatic firearms industry and the role this industry continues to play in perpetuating the American gun culture. It makes many of the same arguments used in lawsuits currently being filed against gun manufacturers by several large US cities. Unlike many previous works which have tended to glorify companies and their founders, Making a Killing is a highly critical piece that cogently argues for increasing the regulation of firearms.
Diaz exposes the links between the gun industry, the gun press, and lobby groups. The gun lobby, through such initiatives as the promotion of state laws permitting the carrying of concealed firearms, has expanded the potential market for the industry. The author quotes the National Rifle Association's chief lobbyist, Tanya Metaksa, as saying: "The gun industry should send me a basket of fruit -- our efforts have created a new market." For its part, the gun industry, through its aggressive marketing strategies, increasingly lethal firearms, and its influence on the gun press disseminate the products and accompanying hype that fuel the gun culture.
The credibility of Diaz's expose is greatly enhanced by his reliance, as his principal sources, on the industry's own spokespersons, experts, and publications. Other scholars critical of the gun industry and lobby have tended to ignore these sources, failing to realize that the industry's own experts and publications are veritable treasures in exposing the mercenary...
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