As the specter of federal gun control legislation in 2013 rises, the debate is being defined primarily by fiction, rather than fact. For those interested in shifting the debate to fact, including serious statistics and analysis of the impact of gun ownership and governmental policies related to gun ownership, I strongly recommend Gary Kleck’s Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. Kleck is professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University. Originally published in 1993, Point Blank won the Michael J. Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology for the book that “made the most outstanding contribution to criminology.”
