In today’s United States, where mass shootings are appallingly frequent, a new generation of Americans is grappling with questions about gun violence and regulation. Under these conditions, we need to know more about the deep history of the country’s apparently unique gun culture. In The Gunning of America, Pamela Haag provides a worthy new contribution to our knowledge of this subject, along with arguments about its implications for present-day policy. According to Haag, America’s special affection for guns was created by their manufacturers, who, like other industrial capitalists, used aggressive marketing and advertising to expand their sales. This history, Haag argues, suggests that present-day discussions of the problem of gun violence need to focus more on corporate social responsibility.

At the core of Haag’s book is a business history of the Connecticut-based firearms company founded by Oliver Winchester (1810–1880). He entered the gun industry in the 1850s, after having considerable success as a manufacturer of men’s ready-made shirts. Winchester’s gun-making company owed its success to the inventions of Benjamin Tyler Henry, who, by 1860, succeeded in designing a workable “repeating rifle” that did not require reloading after each shot. After the Civil War, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company became one of the world’s premier manufacturers of small arms and ammunition. By the eve of World War I, the company had six thousand employees and a record of several decades’ worth of consistent profits and large sales. Haag follows the company’s history through its struggles in the 1920s, after which it was no longer controlled by the Winchester family.

Haag is far from being the first scholar to use original archival research to relate the history of this company. Indeed, more details about many aspects of the story, including more quantitative evidence and superior illustrations, are provided in older works (e.g., Harold F. Williamson, Winchester, the Gun That Won the West; and Herbert G. Houze, Winchester Repeating Arms Company).^{Footnote 1} However, Haag makes a distinctive contribution, going beyond a narrow company history by considering the broader gun industry as well as the popular culture. Haag’s book provides rich and deftly handled discussions of international arms sales (which were critical to Winchester’s early success), marketing, wartime government–business relations, and representations of firearms in the popular culture, such as in dime novels featuring Western gunslingers.

Haag devotes a considerable amount of attention to the life of Sarah Winchester, the daughter-in-law of the company founder. Sarah’s husband, William Winchester, died of tuberculosis in 1881, just a few weeks after the passing of his father Oliver. In the late 1880s, Sarah, in possession of a growing fortune, moved to San Jose, California, where she oversaw the construction of an unconventional, 24,000-square-foot mansion. Sarah’s story, including her alleged obsession with ghosts, has been previously discussed (Captive of the Labyrinth, a book-length biography of Sarah Winchester, was written by Mary Jo Ignoffo, and not long after the publication of Haag’s book, Sarah and her house became the subjects of Winchester, a feature film starring Helen Mirren^{Footnote 2}). Because Sarah Winchester left few papers or letters, Haag’s treatment of this irresistible piece of the story offers little solid evidence. As Haag puts it, Sarah Winchester “is a haunting enigma, and this is speculative work” (p. 148). Perhaps Sarah’s massive, eccentric construction project was driven by her guilt about becoming enriched via corporate social irresponsibility. Or perhaps not.

Haag’s more central argument, about the gun companies’ relentless efforts to boost consumer demand for their products, which contributed to a shift by the early twentieth century to a culture in which many Americans came to have a strong emotional attachment to their guns, is better documented, if not fully satisfying. Haag is surely correct to call attention to the industry’s role in cultivating the rise, starting in the early twentieth century, of the “gun crank,” the lover of guns, willing and able to purchase multiple weapons. Using archival evidence from the 1910s, she also documents the industry’s considerable efforts to market their products to boys—a strategy that likely had important long-term effects. However, Haag’s story, with its focus on the activities of Winchester and other gun companies, says little about the long-term social history of American gun culture. It seems likely that popular demand for guns in the early United States (and even emotional attachment to them) was somewhat higher than Haag suggests; perhaps their growing affordability, and not just clever marketing, was an important reason for Winchester’s strong sales. Future research on the behavior and language of ordinary consumers, along with a more precise discussion of industry financial data and elasticities of demand, may illuminate this subject.

Haag’s valuable book, which ends around the 1930s, calls out for a sequel that would examine the more recent history of the gun industry and its marketing efforts, as well as the representation of guns and gunmen in popular culture. Such a study would likely bolster Haag’s arguments about the need for a public policy discussion that goes beyond a narrow debate over Second Amendment rights, toward a more holistic examination of America’s gun problem, including the responsibilities of weapons producers.