How long can we go between news cycles featuring assault rifles? According to the Gun Violence Archive, in 2023 the answer is barely more than 12 hours. This year there have been 565 mass shootings in the US, including the latest horror in Maine – an average of nearly two a day. Those statistics make American Gun, a brilliant new biography of the AR-15, a particularly powerful and important book.
Written by two fine Wall Street Journal reporters, Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, the book is packed with characters and plot turns, from Eugene Stoner, the publicity-shy inventor who designed the first AR-15 in the 1950s, to the embrace of the gun by Robert McNamara and John F Kennedy, which led to its disastrous adoption as the chief weapon for army infantrymen in Vietnam.
