Gun Violence Choice Review

Routledge

The following review will appear in the January 2015 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only until our publication date of 01 January 2015

Social & Behavioral Sciences

52-2618

HV7435

2013-48555 CIP

Squires, Peter. Gun crime in global contexts. Routledge, 2014. 400p bibl index ISBN 9780415688598, $155.00.

The author identifies "weaponization" as a symptom of neoliberal globalization or Western domination of the world system, characterized by the widespread availability of largely Western-manufactured small arms and light weapons used to perpetrate mass killings and rampages, mostly by men whose gender identity is threatened by a postindustrial political economy based on knowledge rather than force.  Squires (criminology, Univ. of Brighton, UK) contrasts the UK policy response to the Dunblane school massacre (stricter gun control) with the US response to the Columbine school massacre (resistance to any stricter gun control policies).  Synthesizing five communities of academic interpretation in the gun proliferation and violence debate—criminology of gun violence, conflict studies of failed states, studies of weapon proliferation or trade, ethnography of violence and peacemaking, and the inter/national politics of gun control—Squires concludes that the metaphor of the authoritarian Western game of chance—rock, paper, scissors—may be used to illustrate the concept of the separation of unequal powers in liberal democracies that permit the hegemony of the powerful gun lobby, despite overwhelming evidence that the gun is a defective product that does more harm than good to the social contract.
--B. Agozino, Virginia Tech

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.