Book Review - The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell

October 25, 2026

America and Mexico are the only two big countries that constitutionally afford the right to own a gun. Regardless the law of the land, the top 9 countries by gun ownership after America are - Yemen, Serbia, Montenegro, Canada, Uruguay, Cyprus, Finland, Lebanon, Iceland. The first thing I noticed is that you almost see no major developed countries in Europe or Asia. Canada, Finland, Iceland are not the countries you think of from a gun ownership standpoint, but they own primarily to protect themselves from animals, and for recreational hunting. None of them would even think of self-defense (in the American sense) as a reason to own a gun. I have long argued that if you put enough guns in the society, enough violence would automatically happen. But is this true?

To reduce the noise, to get a data-driven view of guns in America, I chose Malcolm Gladwell as the author. He is above politics, he is data-driven to a fault, and most importantly, VERY open to changing his mind when he sees data to support it.

Based on reading this book, I can argue that no one I know has the ability to deconstruct such a complex concept into lay it out in building blocks anyone can understand.

1. The recurring theme of this book is that the conversation around gun control is - through laziness or indifference - a dishonest one. Whether you are a victim or an onlooker or just intellectually curious, you cannot disagree with this view point.
2. The 2nd amendment argument is literally a 5th grade grammar conversation - the specific words, punctuation, use of the 'being' clause belongs the the 18th century. No one today really knows what Madison intended to write. It is quite likely the 2nd amendment was written in the era of slavery and the protection of the slave-owners. Why is it relevant today? That's the kicker.
3. We are counting gun violence the wrong way. Because we are counting deaths and only deaths, we are not normalizing for the enormous advances in medicine and trauma care. Several people who dies as late as in early 20th century, would be alive today if they were to suffer the same gunshot. Most public records and studies only account for deaths, not the survivors. It may well be that if you apply 20th century standards of care, gun violence is much higher today than before.
4. Distance between the place of shooting and the nearest trauma-care facility is the biggest indicator of survivability.
5. America does not have a problem of too much police. It has the problem of too few police. With more police, we can prevent the situations that result in gun related deaths.
6. Gun homicides are done to extract something (like a wallet, as in a robbery) or are based on emotional conflicts between two people that know each other. The latter far outnumbers the former.
7. Gun suicides far outnumber homicides.
8. Most of today's focus on gun control is on rifles. But handguns are easy to conceal, and kill more people. By addressing the rifles and the automatics, we are in fact not addressing the elephant in the room.

Fantastic read. But I wished he had gone deeper on two topics I am utmost curious about. Guns were not a partisan issue until very recently (~15-20 years). How did guns become a partisan issue? I still don't know. What is the role of NRA, and what are their real motivations? Saying that it is the gun industry complex is a valid, but a lazy answer. I wished he had gone deeper into these aspects.