School shootings, gangland slayings, spousal murder. With more guns than people, the United States suffers a death-by-gun rate 10, 20, even 50 times that of other industrialized democracies. What lies behind our 200-year-old fascination with firearms? What explains our national ambivalence toward gun control?

How Americans feel about guns is usually determined by personal experience rather than research results, observes sociologist Gregg Lee Carter. His goal in compiling Guns in American Society, the most comprehensive single source of information on the gun issue, is to help readers educate themselves.

Is the high rate of violence in the United States linked to the prevalence of guns—or to a lack of social homogeneity and economic inequality? Should there be support for stricter or more lenient gun control? Should people carry concealed weapons for personal protection? What exactly did the authors of the Constitution mean by ''the right of the people to keep and bear arms''? The encyclopedia doesn't tell readers how to answer these questions. Instead, it helps them sift through the latest thinking and research in the fields of criminology, history, law, medicine, politics, and sociology, providing objective information so they can make up their own minds.  less