In this sweeping, immersive book, R. Blake Brown outlines efforts to regulate the use of guns by young people, punish the misuse of arms, impose licensing regimes, and create firearm registries. Brown also challenges many popular assumptions about Canadian history, suggesting that gun ownership was far from universal during much of the colonial period, and that many nineteenth century lawyers – including John A. Macdonald – believed in a limited right to bear arms.
Arming and Disarming provides a careful exploration of how social, economic, cultural, legal, and constitutional concerns shaped gun legislation and its implementation, as well as how these factors defined Canada’s historical and contemporary ‘gun culture.’The TOC:
Chapter 1: “Every man has a right to the possession of his musket”: Regulating Firearms before Confederation
Chapter 2: “The government must disarm all the Indians”: Controlling Firearms from Confederation to the Late-Nineteenth Century
Chapter 3: “A rifle in the hands of every able-bodied man in the Dominion of Canada under proper auspices”: Arming Britons and Disarming Immigrants from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Great War
Chapter 4: “Hysterical legislation”: Suppressing Gun Ownership from the First to the Second World Wars
Chapter 5: Angry White Men: Resistance to Gun Control in Canada, 1946-1980
Chapter 6: Flexing the Liberal State’s Muscles: The Montreal Massacre and the 1995 Firearms Act, 1980-2006A review, from the Literary Review of Canada, is available here.
Hat tip: bookforum
