Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People ─ And Other Myths About Guns and Gun Control

Debunking the lethal logic behind the pervasive myths that have framed the gun control debate

“When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” We’ve all heard these slogans time and again. The result of a targeted marketing effort by the NRA and other pro-gun organizations, these catchphrases have come to define the contemporary gun control debate.

Dennis Henigan explodes the misguided thinking at the heart of these pro-gun slogans and dissects their deadly impact on US gun policy in this completely revised and updated edition of his much-praised 2009 hardcover (Lethal Logic, which has never been published in paperback).The gun lobby’s remarkable success in infiltrating the gun control lexicon with these catchy slogans has allowed them to block lifesaving gun legislation for decades and gained them unprecedented influence in American politics.

In this well-researched but accessible book, Henigan takes the NRA’s myths to task and exposes the fallacious thinking behind the gun lobby’s bumper-sticker logic.

Dennis A. Henigan is director of policy analysis and research at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and a former vice president of the Brady Campaign and Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. For over twenty years, he was a leading advocate for stronger gun laws. Under his direction, Brady Center lawyers recovered millions of dollars in damages for gun violence victims, as well as winning precedent-setting decisions on the liability of gun sellers. His work as a public interest lawyer has been profiled in the New Yorker.