How did the Second Amendment come to be read as a full-throated endorsement of unregulated, unlimited gun ownership? Religious historian Erdozain attempts to answer that question by tracing the history of gun rhetoric, law, and legislation from the Founders to the present day. The book stumbles when it attempts to explain why America is so uniquely wedded to its guns: Erdozain argues that slavery is the original sin of gun culture, but seems to dismiss the genocide of Native nations as belonging to a separate, more “controlled” category of violence with a far lesser impact on present-day attitudes toward guns. The chapters dedicated to the rise of the NRA, with its implacable lobbying power, are far more strongly argued, as Erdozain methodically unpicks the misleading and downright false claims made by supporters of gun rights from NRA officials to the justices who sit on the highest court of the land. In a nation where mass shootings have become commonplace, One Nation Under Guns is a damning reminder that it didn’t have to be this way.