GUN FIGHT

Reviewed 9/25/2019

GUN FIGHT The Battle Over the Right To Bear Arms in America Adam Winkler New York: W. W. Norton & Co., September 2011				Rating: 5.0 High
ISBN-13 978-0-393-07741-4
ISBN 0-393-07741-1	361pp.	HC/BWI	$27.95

Errata

Page 36:	The controversy flared up a few years easier, when Josh Sugarmann, founder of the pro-gun control Violence Policy Center, published a study entitled "Assault Weapons and Accessories in America."
	Missing hyphen: S/B "pro-gun-control". The line breaks after "pro-gun," which makes it possible to get the mistaken expression that the VPC is a pro-gun group.

Page 98:

Scalia's appointment to the OLC was approved by the Senate in August 1974—two weeks after the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Scalia's first task at OLC was to prepare a legal opinion analyzing whether Nixon was obligated to turn over the Watergate tapes. In what would be the first in a long line of legal opinions favoring political conservatives, Scalia concluded that the tapes belonged to Nixon personally, and that the former president did not have to give them to Congress.

This chronology seems wrong. If Nixon had resigned, the tapes must have already been released. In addition, Wikipedia notes that the White House turned over the subpoenaed tapes to Congress in late July 1974, per order of the Supreme Court on 24 July.

Page 137:	Groups of former Confederate soldiers began calling themselves KKK with or without Pulaski's permission.
	Vague reference. Pulaski, Tennessee is the town where the original Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1868 when six white men, all CSA veterans, met in the law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones. Nothing in Winkler's account indicates that the town gave the KKK any sort of official sanction.

Page 148:	Firing Morrison now, he said, was "like committing. hari-kari."
	Spelling: S/B "hara-kiri". But this is probably an accurate transcription of the Phil Mendelson quote, since "hari-kari" is a variant stemming from English mispronunciation of the Japanese term.

Page 153:	Nickles may have realized that to avoid public embarrassment he needed to hire a top-shelf advocate, not a friend with no Supreme Court experience.
	But the previous two sentences tell us that Bob Lang, the friend Nickles rejected for the role, had argued cases before the Supreme Court.

Page 157:	It was for people on the edges of the western wilderness who needed firearms to battle gun-toting bandits, scalpel-wielding Natives, and teeth-baring animals.
	An interesting mistake. My guess is it came from a mis-hearing of "scalp-stealing." But it conjures up some amusing scenarios.

Page 163:	These towns had small populations, and thus their murder rates, if calculated, might not be much lower than those of the big cities the East.
	Missing word: S/B "the big cities of the East".