About this item
"In this precise primer on firearms practices and policies, progressive talk-show host Hartmann examines the history of routine gun usage and extreme gun violence and assesses the influence of gun ownership on contemporary political, economic, and social norms...A brief but powerful analysis of a searing national crisis." --BOOKLIST . Thom Hartmann, the most popular progressive radio host in America and a New York Times bestselling author, looks at the real history of guns in America and what we can do to limit both their lethal impact and the power of the gun lobby. . Taking his typically in-depth, historically informed view, Hartmann examines the brutal role guns have played in American history, from the genocide of the Native Americans to the enforcement of slavery (Slave Patrols are in fact the Second Amendments "well-regulated militias") and the racist post-Civil War social order. He shows how the NRA and conservative Supreme Court justices used specious logic to invent a virtually unlimited individual right to own guns, which has enabled the ever-growing number of mass shootings in the United States. But Hartmann also identifies a handful of powerful, commonsense solutions that would break the power of the gun lobby and restore the understanding of the Second Amendment that the Framers of the Constitution intended. This is the kind of brief, brilliant analysis for which Hartmann is justly renowned.
About the Author
Thom Hartmann is the four-time Project Censored Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of 25 books currently in print in over a dozen languages on five continents. Hartmann is also an internationally known speaker on culture and communications, an author, and an innovator in the fields of psychiatry, ecology, and economics. The co-founder (with his wife, Louise) and former Executive Director of The New England Salem Children's Village (1978) and The Hunter School (1997) , he has led national innovations in the areas of residential treatment for abused children and private/public education for learning-disabled children. He has helped set up hospitals, famine relief programs, schools, and refugee centers in India, Uganda, Australia, Colombia, Russia, and the United States through the German-based Salem International program. Formerly rostered with the State of Vermont as a psychotherapist, founder of The Michigan Healing Arts Center, and licensed as an NLP Trainer by Richard Bandler (who wrote the foreword to one of Thom's books) , he was the originator of the revolutionary "Hunter/Farmer Hypothesis" to understand the psychiatric condition known as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) . A guest faculty member at Goddard College in Vermont, he also synthesized the "Younger/Older Culture model" for describing the underpinnings - and possible solutions - to the world's ecological and socio-political crises, suggesting that many of our problems are grounded in cultural "stories" which go back thousands of years. Leonardo DiCaprio was inspired by Thom's book "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" to make the movie "The 11th Hour" (in which Thom appears) , and a series of environmental videos narrated by Hartmann and DiCaprio, available at Green World Rising. Talkers Magazine named Thom Hartmann as the most important progressive talk show host in America for the past decade, and for three of the past five years the #1 most important progressive host, in their "Heavy Hundred" ranking. His radio show is syndicated on for-profit radio stations nationwide by WYD Media, on non-profit and community stations nationwide by Pacifica, across the entire North American continent on SiriusXM Satellite radio, on cable systems nationwide by Cable Radio Network (CRN) and Free Speech TV, on its own YouTube channel, via subscription podcasts, worldwide through the US American Forces Network, and through the Thom Hartmann App in the App Store. The radio show is also simulcast as TV in realtime into nearly 60 million US and Canadian homes by the Free Speech TV Network on Dish Network, DirectTV, and cable TV systems nationwide. As an entrepreneur, he's founded several successful businesses which still are operating, and lived and worked with his wife, Louise, and their three (now adult) children on several continents. He was born and
