The Violence Inside Us
A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy
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4.5 • 11 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
“An engrossing, moving, and utterly motivating account of the human stakes of gun violence in America.”—Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Education of an Idealist
Is America destined to always be a violent nation? This sweeping history by U.S. senator Chris Murphy explores the origins of our violent impulses, the roots of our obsession with firearms, and the mythologies that prevent us from confronting our national crisis.
In many ways, the United States sets the pace for other nations to follow. Yet on the most important human concern—the need to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe from physical harm—America isn’t a leader. We are disturbingly laggard. To confront this problem, we must first understand it. In this carefully researched and deeply emotional book, Senator Chris Murphy dissects our country’s violence-filled history and the role that our unique obsession with firearms plays in this national epidemic.
Murphy tells the story of his profound personal transformation in the wake of the mass murder at Newtown, and his subsequent immersion in the complicated web of influences that drive American violence. Murphy comes to the conclusion that while America’s relationship to violence is indeed unique, America is not inescapably violent. Even as he details the reasons we’ve tolerated so much bloodshed for so long, he explains that we have the power to change. Murphy takes on the familiar arguments, obliterates the stale talking points, and charts the way to a fresh, less polarized conversation about violence and the weapons that enable it—a conversation we urgently need in order to transform the national dialogue and save lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poverty, racial animosity, and, above all, guns are to blame for America's "morbid circus of human carnage," argues this wonky but fervent debut. Murphy, a U.S. senator from Connecticut, attributes America's history of bloodshed to strife between ethnic and immigrant groups, the legacy of slavery, economic desperation in inner cities, and sky-high gun ownership rates that push murder rates far above those in other developed nations. He also indicts U.S. interventionism, including drone strikes and support for Saudi Arabia's bombing of Yemen, for spreading violence overseas. The book is partly a brief for gun control measures, including universal background checks and a ban on assault rifles; in support of these policy proposals, Murphy features studies tying homicide rates to changes in firearms laws, as well as emotional scenes in which he comforts parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre and by shootings in inner-city Hartford. Some of his arguments are slightly misleading, as when he writes that a Justice Department report found that "poor white Americans are actually more likely to be involved in violent crime... than poor African-Americans"; the report concludes that poor whites are likelier to be victimized by crime, not "involved in" it. Still, Murphy makes a solid case for common-sense gun regulation.
