Book Review: The Seven Myths of Gun Control, by Richard Poe

This is a very refreshing book that tackles a taboo issue in society nowadays, particularly given the fact that the culture has generally gravitated towards left-wing politics, and as such more or less embrace gun control. I found Poe's tackling of the issue to be refreshing and much of his supporting evidence to be compelling. The book is easy to read, and may make several people uncomfortable, by virtue of his candidness. This book is not for the politically correct. For pro-gun readers, it helps to buttress their already-held beliefs of responsible gun ownership as a right (well at least in the U.S., I'm in Canada). I really liked how he dissected the race issue - no one wants to discuss the race factor, but let's face it, we all know that some racial communities have more issues with gun crime than others (for what it's worth, this opinion is coming from a me as a minority - Asian).

All that being said, I found several weaknesses in Poe's book. One was his frequent citing of fictitious events and scenarios such as movies to try to buttress his point. Personally, I would have found his arguments even stronger had he injected more real life statistics, rather than cite something from the movies.

Structurally, he either spent way too much time on myth one (which was addressed very well), or not enough time on the others. He does recognize this, but even so, I found that the last two myths seemed to be given just a cursory glance without really delving much into debunking the myth - it was almost as if he had to get the completed book to the publishers by a certain time, and so he simply rushed the last two chapters.

Speaking of structural issues, what is with the countless paragraph headings within each chapter. I think the book would have flowed better had the paragraphs not been so explicitly separated like this. There was negligible effect, if any at all.

Further, I found that fairly frequently, Poe tended to start a discussion, and then move to a tangent and then proceed to spend the rest of the chapter dissecting the tangent (of which the connection to the chapter topic is a stretch at best). To this reader, I got lost trying to figure out whether he needed filler material to fatten up the pages, or whether he needed to get a better editor (or perhaps he simply needed to inject his own opinion and interpretation somewhere).

I found that his often citing websites as supporting documentation to stifle his credibility somewhat. Not sure how you would feel about it, but in my view, given the fact that the premise of the book is to dispel myths (and presumably use solid documented evidence in the process), citing actually published works would lend more of an academic seriousness to his writing, rather than citing websites that I have never heard of, and since anyone can put together a website with questionable data, I am not sure whether it was a wise decision for him to cite online sources by and large.

Finally, I found the epilogue completely unnecessary. Without giving away any of the material, even a casual reader can safely conclude that any questions about whether his biases are injected in the book are answered in the epilogue. While I agree in principle with what he is saying, the connection to gun control myths with the substance in the epilogue is sketchy at best.

However, I still am content to give this a solid four-out-of-five rating. It's just very refreshing to see this topic addressed, and not from a idealistic or psychological angle, but with practical examples and brutally honest arguments. The book is a very easy read, and I'd recommend it to both pro and anti-gun readers to digest. I certainly learned a number of new things from the book, and for me, it provoked much thought about this subject, even though I am on the pro-gun side of the fence.