The Gunning of America

The Gunning of America

Author: Pamela Haag

Publisher:

Published: 2016-04-19

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 0465048951

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"An acclaimed historian explodes the myth about the 'special relationship' between Americans and their guns, revealing that savvy 19th century businessmen--not gun lovers--created American gun culture"--


Louis Johnson and the Arming of America

Louis Johnson and the Arming of America

Author: Keith D. McFarland

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2005-10-04

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9780253111647

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"Without question this is an important new addition to World War II and Cold War historiography.... Highly recommended." -- Douglas Brinkley, author of Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years and The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey beyond the White House "A remarkably objective, yet sympathetic, study of Louis Johnson's life and career. Now only half-remembered,... Johnson was a major national figure. Colorful, aggressive, independent-minded, egotistical, his strong views and conflicts with Dean Acheson proved to be his undoing. All in all, a fascinating tale." -- James R. Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense "McFarland and Roll have performed a real service in rescuing from obscurity this Democratic mover and shaker. Their account of the rise and fall of Louis Johnson provides us with the fullest depiction yet of an important Washington figure employed for better or worse as a blunt instrument of policy change by both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman." -- Alonzo L. Hamby, author of Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman and For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s "[Johnson's] career is a cautionary tale of how even the most ruthlessly effective men can become pawns in the Washington power game. McFarland and Roll bring Johnson to life in this thorough and well-told history." -- Evan Thomas, Newsweek, author of Robert Kennedy: His Life and The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA Louis Johnson was FDR's Assistant Secretary of War and the architect of the industrial mobilization plans that put the nation on a war footing prior to its entry into World War II. Later, as Truman's Secretary of Defense, Johnson was given the difficult job of unifying the armed forces and carrying out Truman's orders to dramatically reduce defense expenditures. In both administrations, he was asked to confront and carry out extremely unpopular initiatives -- massive undertakings that each president believed were vital to the nation's security and economic welfare. Johnson's conflicts with Henry Morganthau, Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring, Winston Churchill, Harry Hopkins, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, and Paul Nitze find contemporary parallels in the recent disagreements between the national defense establishment and the State Department.


Arming and Disarming

Arming and Disarming

Author: R. Blake Brown

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2012-10-23

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1442665602

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From the École Polytechnique shootings of 1989 to the political controversy surrounding the elimination of the federal long-gun registry, the issue of gun control has been a subject of fierce debate in Canada. But in fact, firearm regulation has been a sharply contested issue in the country since Confederation. Arming and Disarming offers the first comprehensive history of gun control in Canada from the colonial period to the present. In this sweeping, immersive book, R. Blake Brown outlines efforts to regulate the use of guns by young people, punish the misuse of arms, impose licensing regimes, and create firearm registries. Brown also challenges many popular assumptions about Canadian history, suggesting that gun ownership was far from universal during much of the colonial period, and that many nineteenth century lawyers – including John A. Macdonald – believed in a limited right to bear arms. Arming and Disarming provides a careful exploration of how social, economic, cultural, legal, and constitutional concerns shaped gun legislation and its implementation, as well as how these factors defined Canada’s historical and contemporary ‘gun culture.’


Armed America

Armed America

Author: Clayton E. Cramer

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2009-08-24

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1418551872

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"For many Americans, guns seem to be a fundamental part of the American experience?and always have been." Grand in scope, rigorous in research, and elegant in presenting the formative years of our country, Armed America traces the winding historical trail of United States citizens' passion for firearms. Author and historial Clayton E. Cramer goes back to the source, unearthing first-hand accounts from the colonial times, through the Revolutionary War period, and into the early years of the American Republic. In Armed America, Cramer depicts a budding nation dependent on its firearms not only for food and protection, but also for recreation and enjoyment. Through newspaper clippings, official documents, and personal diaries, he shows that recent grandiose theories claiming that guns were scarce in early America are shaky at best, and downright false at worst. Above all, Cramer allows readers a priceless glimpse of a country literally fighting for its identity. For those who think that our citizens' attraction to firearms is a recent phenomenon, it's time to think again. Armed America proves that the right to bear arms is as American as apple pie.


A Well-regulated Militia

A Well-regulated Militia

Author: Saul Cornell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0195341031

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A leading constitutional historian argues that the Founding Fathers viewed the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but rather an obligation a citizen owed to the government to arm themselves and participate in a well-regulated militia.


Armed Citizens

Armed Citizens

Author: Noah Shusterman

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0813944627

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Although much has changed in the United States since the eighteenth century, our framework for gun laws still largely relies on the Second Amendment and the patterns that emerged in the colonial era. America has long been a heavily armed, and racially divided, society, yet few citizens understand either why militias appealed to the founding fathers or the role that militias played in North American rebellions, in which they often functioned as repressive—and racist—domestic forces. In Armed Citizens, Noah Shusterman explains for a general reader what eighteenth-century militias were and why the authors of the Constitution believed them to be necessary to the security of a free state. Suggesting that the question was never whether there was a right to bear arms, but rather, who had the right to bear arms, Shusterman begins with the lessons that the founding generation took from the history of Ancient Rome and Machiavelli’s reinterpretation of those myths during the Renaissance. He then turns to the rise of France’s professional army during seventeenth-century Europe and the fear that it inspired in England. Shusterman shows how this fear led British writers to begin praising citizens’ militias, at the same time that colonial America had come to rely on those militias as a means of defense and as a system to police enslaved peoples. Thus the start of the Revolution allowed Americans to portray their struggle as a war of citizens against professional soldiers, leading the authors of the Constitution to place their trust in citizen soldiers and a "well-regulated militia," an idea that persists to this day.


The War on Guns

The War on Guns

Author: John R. Lott

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-08-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1621575985

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When it comes to the gun control debate, there are two kinds of data: data that's accurate, and data that left-wing billionaires, liberal politicians, and media want you to believe is accurate. In The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies, nationally-renowned economist John R. Lott, Jr. turns a skeptical eye to well-funded anti-gun studies and stories that perpetuate false statistics to frighten Americans into giving up their guns. In this, his latest and most important book, The War on Guns, Lott offers the most thorough debunking yet of the so-called “facts,” “data,” and “arguments” of anti-gun advocates, exposing how they have repeatedly twisted or ignored the real evidence, the evidence that of course refutes them on every point. In The War on Guns, you’ll learn: Why gun licenses and background checks don’t stop crime How “gun-free” zones actually attract mass shooters Why Stand Your Ground laws are some of the best crime deterrents we have Women now hold over a quarter of concealed handgun permits How big-money liberal foundations and the federal government are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into “public health” studies, the sole purpose of which is to manufacture false data against guns How media bias and ignorance skew the gun debate—and why it will get worse From 1950-2010, not a single mass public shooting occurred in an area where general civilians are allowed to carry guns


Arming America through the Centuries

Arming America through the Centuries

Author: Benjamin Franklin Cooling

Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press

Published: 2022-09-29

Total Pages: 505

ISBN-13: 162190587X

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While many associate the concept commonly referred to as the “military-industrial complex” with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, the roots of it existed two hundred years earlier. This concept, as Benjamin Franklin Cooling writes, was “part of historical lore” as a burgeoning American nation discovered the inextricable relationship between arms and the State. In Arming America through the Centuries, Cooling examines the origins and development of the military-industrial complex (MIC) over the course of American history. He argues that the evolution of America’s military-industrial-business-political experience is the basis for a contemporary American Sparta. Cooling explores the influence of industry on security, the increasing prevalence of outsourcing, ever-present economic and political influence, and the evolving nature of modern warfare. He connects the budding military-industrial relations of the colonial era and Industrial Revolution to their formal interdependence during the Cold War down to the present-day resurrection of Great Power competition. Across eight chronological chapters, Cooling weaves together threads of industry, finance, privatization, appropriations, and technology to create a rich historical tapestry of US national defense in one comprehensive volume. Integrating information from both recent works as well as canonical, older sources, Cooling’s ambitious single-volume synthesis is a uniquely accessible and illuminating survey not only for scholars and policymakers but for students and general readers as well.


A Call to Arms

A Call to Arms

Author: Maury Klein

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-07-16

Total Pages: 916

ISBN-13: 1608194094

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The colossal scale of World War II required a mobilization effort greater than anything attempted in all of the world's history. The United States had to fight a war across two oceans and three continents--and to do so, it had to build and equip a military that was all but nonexistent before the war began. Never in the nation's history did it have to create, outfit, transport, and supply huge armies, navies, and air forces on so many distant and disparate fronts. The Axis powers might have fielded better-trained soldiers, better weapons, and better tanks and aircraft, but they could not match American productivity. The United States buried its enemies in aircraft, ships, tanks, and guns; in this sense, American industry and American workers, won World War II. The scale of the effort was titanic, and the result historic. Not only did it determine the outcome of the war, but it transformed the American economy and society. Maury Klein's A Call to Arms is the definitive narrative history of this epic struggle--told by one of America's greatest historians of business and economics--and renders the transformation of America with a depth and vividness never available before.