Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent.

Geoff Hamilton is a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
British Columbia.

Bascuñán and Pearce offer here a roving examination of (North) American “gun culture,” with an emphasis on tracing the various commercial, legislative, and social forces which contribute to the defense of individual ownership of firearms. Though the subtitle suggests something like a historical overview, the focus is largely on gun violence in urban environments during the last few decades. The book says little about the popularity of hunting, but its four major chapters do an admirable job investigating the range of powerful weapons currently available for purchase (legally and otherwise), the business models and marketing strategies of the major manufacturers of those weapons, and the inefficacy of attempts to regulate the industry. Key to the authors’ argument is the idea that blame for gun violence ought to be spread more widely: “on the factories where firearms are manufactured, on the halls of government where laws take shape, on the offices of corporate media where decisions are made to take financial advantage of a profound fascination with the image of guns.”

The authors, who co-own the urban culture magazine Pound, write in an engagingly informal style, interspersing their text with numerous charts, sidebar anecdotes, quotations from hip-hop albums, and the occasional bit of artwork. The result is a fast-paced, punchy approach to the subject, if at times one that seems a little too “hip” for its own good, as on those occasions when its vocabulary seems inadequate for conveying the subtlety of the point being made: “Contrary to some people’s preconceptions about a young black man rocking a black do-rag with an Atlanta Falcons jersey, Kempton Howard just tried to do the right thing.” That quibble aside, this is a well-researched, thorough investigation of the allure of guns in urban environments, and it makes a compelling case for the need to address the myriad ways in which guns are promoted and gun violence made possible.