The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell: A punchy but sometimes superficial polemic

The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic

Author: Abacus Books

ISBN-13: 978-0349149288

Publisher: Malcolm Gladwell

Guideline Price: £25; 304pp

Sir John Knight never had the pleasure of knowing that his hatred for Catholics (especially Irish ones) would help weaken the United States’s gun laws. In 1686 the hot-headed future Tory MP stood trial for waving his blunderbuss around a Bristol church but was found not guilty by an all-Protestant jury. Four years ago the conservative-controlled US supreme court used Knight’s acquittal to justify striking down restrictions on carrying concealed weapons in New York.

As Malcolm Gladwell’s punchy, revealing but occasionally superficial polemic laments, “legal shenanigans” such as these are a regular feature of the US’s gun-control debate. The issue is constantly hijacked by “fundamentally dishonest” ideologues, squabbling over historic irrelevancies and false premises while schoolchildren are taught how to stabilise bullet wounds. “This does not happen anywhere else in the developed world,” he writes. “I want to find out why.”

Gladwell’s technique remains the one he pioneered in his 2000 bestseller The Tipping Point (Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Rory McIlroy are all great admirers). The Canadian journalist is a magpie-like collector of colourful case studies, with a flair for distilling academic research into grand unifying theories. The American Way of Killing also draws on material from his podcast Revisionist History, including interview transcripts that often run for several pages.

The results are scattershot. Gladwell explains how the US’s constitutional right to bear arms originated as “a grubby compromise”, aimed at winning support from slave owners who feared revolts. Kamala Harris and other Democratic campaigners for an assault rifle ban are wasting their ammunition, since basic handguns destroy far more lives. Declining homicide rates, meanwhile, only prove that surgeons have got better at saving shooting victims.

Most importantly, Gladwell slams policymakers who ignore the distinction between instrumental violence (committed to achieve a goal, surprisingly rare) and expressive violence (spontaneous, pointless, depressingly common). Decrying the radical left slogan “Defund the Police”, he calls for more socially engaged cops who can teach hard-drinking young men not to draw firearms if they get stuck in a hamburger queue.

Gladwell’s tone borders on the melodramatic and there is a definite sense here of him oversimplifying data before reaching glib conclusions. If the main aim of any pop-science book is to make readers think “I never thought about it that way”, however, then he just about hits his target.

Andrew Lynch is an arts critic, subeditor and proofreader