Arms by A. J Somerset, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

In Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun, novelist, sports shooterand former army reservist A. J. Somerset offers up one of the firstlooks at the gun as the pre-eminent cultural symbol of power inNorth America and asks how it got that way. Touring through thevarious cultural battlefields of 19th- and 20th-century Canada andthe United States, including film, literature, music, video games, and history, Somerset charts how the gun went from a tool in thehands of the earliest North American pioneers, used to defend thehomestead and put food on the table, to a kind of totem, instantlycapable of dividing communities. Sharp-eyed and ascerbic, surehandedand sportive, Arms presents an intellectual and culturalhistory that is certain to enrage, entertain and provoke debate, while showing that the gun cultures of Canada and the UnitedStates may not be so different after all. If guns, as the NRA oftenexclaims, do not kill people, Somerset shows how it is that the ideaof the gun has become one many have believed worth dying for. | Arms by A. J Somerset, Paperback | Indigo Chapters