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Interesting book
Posted by David Hardy · 1 February 2006 01:19 PM
I've been reading Osha Gray Davidon's "Under Fire: NRA & The Battle for Gun Control." It's a 1993 work, and thus doesn't cover the field since then -- pretty much ends with the Brady Act.
The author is strongly antigun, but except in a few places, doesn't let it affect his writing, that I can see. (He even acknowledges that "cop killer bullets" were an invented issue, and NRA was right on that). He does have some incredibly good sources for his material. I could only find one minor error in his history -- he has two firings occurring on the same day, when in fact they were a couple of weeks apart.
· NRA
Davidson's slant is horribly anti-gun, but his recantation of history is very even-handed. I have not found a better description of what happened in the House during the Hughes Amendment (full-auto ban) debacle during FOPA 1986.
I reluctantly bought this book when it came out, but it has proved to be a worthy buy for 2A history, especially that of the 1980s.