zusha ELinson
In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner sought to devise a lightweight, easy-to-use weapon that could replace the M1s touted by soldiers in World War II. What he did create was a lethal handheld icon of the American century.
In American Gun, the veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson track the AR-15 from inception to ubiquity. How did the same gun represent the essence of freedom to millions of Americans and the essence of evil to millions more? To answer this question, McWhirter and Elinson follow Stoner―the American Kalashnikov―as he struggled mightily to win support for his invention, which under the name M16 would become standard equipment in Vietnam.
Shunned by gun owners at first, the rifle’s popularity would take off thanks to a renegade band of small-time gun makers. And in the 2000s, it would become the weapon of choice for mass shooters, prompting widespread calls for proscription even as the gun industry embraced it as a financial savior. Writing with fairness and compassion, McWhirter and Elinson explore America’s gun culture, revealing the deep appeal of the AR-15, the awful havoc it wreaks, and the politics of reducing its toll. The result is a moral history of contemporary America’s love affair with technology, freedom, and weaponry.
"A magisterial work of narrative history and original reportage . . . [Written] in calm, precise language that allows the authors’ exhaustive research to shine through . . . You can feel the tension building one cold, catastrophic fact at a time. . . American Gun lays out the unvarnished truth."
— New York Times book review
About ZUSHA
Zusha Elinson is a national reporter for The Wall Street Journal, based in California, who writes about guns and violence. He grew up on a dirt road in upstate New York, graduated from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and worked as a chimney sweep. Elinson has also written for the Center for Investigative Reporting and The New York Times Bay Area section. He received a MacDowell Fellowship to complete this book. (Photo by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey)
