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The second amendment is the most hotly debated and controversial right in the Constitution. In light of the recent surge of school shootings and other gun-related crimes, gun policy has become one of our leading national concerns, affecting politicians, gun manufacturers, sport shooters, and ordinary citizens alike.

Showcasing viewpoints from all sides of the gun control debate, Gun Control and Gun Rights, presents the first balanced gun policy textbook for use by undergraduates, graduate students, law students and the general public.

This comprehensive anthology includes selections from legal cases, hunting stories, public policy briefs and journalistic accounts. Anyone looking for a fair, even-handed account of the gun issue will find it in this book.

This latest in the Casemate Illustrated series explores American armor during the Pacific Campaign of WWII, from 1942-45. During this period there were over twenty major tank battles and operations where tanks provided heavy support to infantry units. These operations include the battle of Tarawa and the Bougainville Campaign. Relying heavily on first-person accounts, the strategies and tactics of the opposing forces are discussed. This book also looks at the Pacific theater, and how American armor was employed with great success in that theater of war. Detailed information on American and Japanese armored forces, including development, equipment, capabilities, organization, and order of battle, is given.

Technology of one kind or another has always been a central ingredient in war. The Spartan king Archidamus, for instance, reacted with alarm when first witnessing a weapon that could shoot darts through the air. And yet during the past two centuries technology has played an unprecedented role in military affairs and thinking, and in the overall conduct of war. In addition, the impact of new technology on warfare has brought major social and cultural changes.

This volume explores the relationship between war, technology, and modern society over the course of the last several centuries. The two world wars, total conflicts in which industrial technology took a terrible human toll, brought great changes to the practice of organized violence among nations; even so many aspect of military life and values remained largely unaffected. In the latter half of the twentieth century, technology in the form of nuclear deterrence appears to have prevented the global conflagration of world war while complicating and fueling ferocious regional contests.

A stimulating fusion of military and social history, extending back to the eighteenth century, and with contributions from such leading historians as Brian Bond, Paddy Griffith, and Neil McMillen, War in the Age of Technology will interest lay readers and specialists alike.

Behind the Fog is the first in-depth, comprehensive examination of the United States' Cold War radiological weapons program. The book examines controversial military-sponsored studies and field trials using radioactive "simulants" that exposed American civilians to radiation and other hazardous substances without their knowledge or consent during the Cold War. Although Western biological and chemical weapons programs have been analyzed by a number of scholars, Behind the Fog is a strong departure from the rest in that the United States radiological weapons program has been generally unknown to the public. Martino-Taylor documents the coordinated efforts of a small group of military scientists who advanced a four-pronged secret program of human-subject radiation studies that targeted unsuspecting Americans for Cold War military purposes. Officials enabled such projects to advance through the layering of secrecy, by embedding classified studies in other studies, and through outright deception. Agency and academic partnerships advanced, supported, and concealed the studies from the public at large who ultimately served as unwitting test subjects. Martino-Taylor's comprehensive research illuminates a dark chapter of government secrecy, the military-industrial-academic complex, and large-scale organizational deviance in American history. In its critical approach, Behind the Fog effectively examines the mechanisms that allow large-scale elite deviance to take place in modern society.

A single breakthrough could change the world forever.Having just completed a complex recovery assignment, covert salvage specialist Korso is in no mood to take on another job so soon, but he has little choice when he's contacted by Cole Ashcroft, an ex-colleague who's calling in a debt. An official at the US Embassy in Bulgaria has approached Cole with a well-paying salvage job, but only if he can persuade Korso to plan the whole operation. A chemist for a pharmaceutical company has secretly developed a revolutionary glaucoma pill, one with an unexpected side effect that could make it the discovery of the century. But the chemist has since been found dead, and the prototypes are missing... Aware that ownership of these pills could shift the balance of military power overnight, the embassy man offers to pay Korso handsomely to locate and recover them using any means necessary. But with a job this big Korso also knows he'll have to assemble a team to help him, and that brings its own set of problems. Because with potential profits in the billions, can he really trust anyone...? A full-throttle thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end, perfect for fans of Mark Greaney, Ben Coes and Adam Hamdy.

It is said that artillery won the Second World War for the Allies - that Soviet guns wore down German forces on the Eastern Front, negating their superior tactics and fighting ability, and that the accuracy and intensity of the British and American artillery was a major reason for the success of Allied forces in North Africa from El Alamein, in Italy and Normandy, and played a vital role in the battles of 1944 and 1945\. Yet the range of weapons used is often overlooked or taken for granted - which is why this highly illustrated history by Simon and Jonathan Forty is of such value. They stress the importance of artillery on every front and analyse how artillery equipment, training and tactical techniques developed during the conflict. The selection of wartime photographs - many from east European sources - and the extensive quotations from contemporary documents give a graphic impression of how the guns were used on all sides. The photographs emphasize the wide range of pieces employed as field, anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery without forgetting self-propelled guns, coastal and other heavyweights and the development of rockets. The authors offer a fascinating insight into the weapons that served in the artillery over seventy years ago.

Superior engineering skills among Union soldiers helped ensure victory in the Civil War. Engineering Victory brings a fresh approach to the question of why the North prevailed in the Civil War. Historian Thomas F. Army, Jr., identifies strength in engineering-not superior military strategy or industrial advantage-as the critical determining factor in the war's outcome. Army finds that Union soldiers were able to apply scientific ingenuity and innovation to complex problems in a way that Confederate soldiers simply could not match. Skilled Free State engineers who were trained during the antebellum period benefited from basic educational reforms, the spread of informal educational practices, and a culture that encouraged learning and innovation. During the war, their rapid construction and repair of roads, railways, and bridges allowed Northern troops to pass quickly through the forbidding terrain of the South as retreating and maneuvering Confederates struggled to cut supply lines and stop the Yankees from pressing any advantage. By presenting detailed case studies from both theaters of the war, Army clearly demonstrates how the soldiers' education, training, and talents spelled the difference between success and failure, victory and defeat. He also reveals massive logistical operations as critical in determining the war's outcome.

Over the last decade, the U.S., UK Israel and other states have begun to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for military operations and for targeted killings in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Worldwide, over 80 governments are developing their own drone programs, and even non-state actors such as the Islamic State have begun to experiment with drones. The speed of technological change and adaptation with drones is so rapid that it is outpacing the legal and ethical frameworks which govern the use of force. This volume brings together experts in law, ethics and political science to address how drone technology is slowly changing the rules and norms surrounding the use of force and enabling new, sometimes unprecedented, actions by states. It addresses some of the most crucial questions in the debate over drones today. Are drones a revolutionary form of technology that will transform warfare or is their effect merely hype? Can drone use on the battlefield be made wholly consistent with international law? How does drone technology begin to shift the norms governing the use of force? What new legal and ethical problems are presented by targeted killings outside of declared war zones? Should drones be considered a humane form of warfare? Finally, is it possible that drones could be a force for good in humanitarian disasters and peacekeeping missions in the near future? This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

A major revision of our understanding of long-range bombing, this book examines how Anglo-American ideas about "strategic" bombing were formed and implemented. It argues that ideas about bombing civilian targets rested on--and gained validity from--widespread but substantially erroneous assumptions about the nature of modern industrial societies and their vulnerability to aerial bombardment. These assumptions were derived from the social and political context of the day and were maintained largely through cognitive error and bias. Tami Davis Biddle explains how air theorists, and those influenced by them, came to believe that strategic bombing would be an especially effective coercive tool and how they responded when their assumptions were challenged.

Biddle analyzes how a particular interpretation of the World War I experience, together with airmen's organizational interests, shaped interwar debates about strategic bombing and preserved conceptions of its potentially revolutionary character. This flawed interpretation as well as a failure to anticipate implementation problems were revealed as World War II commenced. By then, the British and Americans had invested heavily in strategic bombing. They saw little choice but to try to solve the problems in real time and make long-range bombing as effective as possible.

Combining narrative with analysis, this book presents the first-ever comparative history of British and American strategic bombing from its origins through 1945. In examining the ideas and rhetoric on which strategic bombing depended, it offers critical insights into the validity and robustness of those ideas--not only as they applied to World War II but as they apply to contemporary warfare.

Exploring a variety of ways of thinking ethically about drone violence.The violent use of armed, unmanned aircraft ('drones') is increasing worldwide, but uncertainty persists about the moral status of remote-control killing and why it should be restrained. Practitioners, observers and potential victims of such violence often struggle to reconcile it with traditional expectations about the nature of war and the risk to combatants. Addressing the ongoing policy concern that state use of drone violence is sometimes poorly understood and inadequately governed, the book's ethical assessments are not restricted to the application of traditional Just War principles, but also consider the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), virtue ethics, and guiding principles for forceful law-enforcement. This edited collection brings together nine original contributions by established and emerging scholars, incorporating expertise in military ethics, critical military studies, gender, history, international law and international relations, in order to better assess the multi-faceted relationship between drone violence and justice.

This book begins with an account of the evolution of improvised explosive devices using a number of micro case studies to explore how and why actors have initiated IED campaigns; how new and old technologies and expertise have been exploited and how ethical barriers to IED development and deployment have been dealt with. It proceeds to bring the evidence from the case studies together to identify themes and trends in IED development, before looking at what can realistically be done to mitigate the threat of IEDs in the new wars of the twenty first century. The book suggests that the advance and availability of a combination of technological factors, in conjunction with changes in the nature of contemporary conflicts, have led to the emergence of IEDs as the paradigmatic weapons of new wars. However their prevalence in contemporary and future conflicts is not inevitable, but rather depends on the willingness of multiple sets of actors at different levels to build a web of preventative measures to mitigate - if not eradicate - IED development and deployment.

The Royal Armouries' collection of Asian arms and armour is among the finest in the world. With the aid of stunning photography, former Deputy Master Thom Richardson outlines a rich and vibrant diversity of military cultures from the Ottoman Empire to East Asia. The book provides fascinating information about medieval Islam, the Ottoman Turks, the Arabian Peninsula, Islamic kingdoms of North Africa, Iran and Iraq, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, India and Indonesia.

The M1 Carbine was produced in more numbers than any other US small arm in World War II. In 1938 the US Chief of Infantry requested that the Ordnance Department develop a carbine or light rifle to be used by service and support troops, artillerymen, machinegun crews, tankers, mortar crews and other troops not needing the power of the M1 Garand rifle. The development of this new weapon was given an added impetus by Germany's successful use of airborne and glider troops early on in World War II. This caused a fear amongst US officers that troops normally considered "behind the lines" personnel might have to fight elite German troops and would therefore require a more effective weapon than their standard pistols. The resulting M1 Carbine was a not a shortened version of the standard service rifle but instead a brand-new design chambering a new cartridge. This new weapon would see service in every theater and with all US service arms as well as American and Allied special units including the OSS, Merrill's Marauders, the SAS and the SBS. Eventually numerous manufacturers would combine to produce over six million M1 Carbines before the end of the war. This new title provides an in-depth analysis on this crucial, trailblazing weapon.

This definitive overview of the development and use of artillery makes the complex artillery systems of today understandable, while at the same time showing how they have evolved and how they are likely to change in the future. The author, until recently chief of artillery for the British Army, is considered one of the world's foremost experts on the subject. Unlike other books that either describe the technical aspects of present-day firepower or outline its history during specific wars, this work provides both a detailed explanation of the modern artillery system and a history of its development over the past six hundred fifty years, identifying its enduring principles and changing practices against an ever-changing background of technology, tactics, and strategy. When an earlier version of this book was published in 1989, it became known as the best single source on field artillery in the English language. This new edition has been fully updated and substantially expanded to cover a wide range of contemporary military debates and the role of firepower, and is certain to be regarded as the ultimate work on the subject for years to come. J. B. A. Bailey assesses major developments over the past decade, analyzing artillery operations in airborne, urban, littoral, desert, jungle, mountain, artic, and nocturnal environments. He examines direct fire, counterfire, the suppression of enemy air defenses, and force protection methods. He explains field artillery from its primitive beginnings to its dominance as an art in World War II and its potent utility in operations since 1945 and into the future. The book will be of particular interest to military historians and those engaged in debating firepower's future. Published in cooperation with the Association of the United States Army. 15 photographs. 8 line drawings. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. 7 x 10 inches.

One of the best-known quotes of the American Civil War is Admiral David Farragut's defiant order at the Battle of Mobile Bay, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" Farragut was not referring to a self-propelled underwater missile. By the time of the Civil War, the term torpedo was used for any unusual explosive device, including what today we call naval mines, land mines, booby-traps, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs). This war saw the invention, proliferation, and application of a remarkable variety of these weapons, with land- and water-based mines and other exploding devices used for sabotage and terror--notably against railroad bridges--all coming of age during the conflict. Confederate engineers and individual citizens were responsible for many innovations and applications of torpedoes since they were ideal for defence. The Union developed a range of countermeasures, from mounting "rakes" on vessels to driving livestock across mined fields, but to no avail as more Union ships were lost to torpedoes than all other means combined. Civil War Torpedoes: A History of Improvised Explosive Devices in the War Between the States identifies and categorizes, for the first time, the many and varied improvised explosive devices used during the war by both sides, providing a single source for the identification of these devices, their construction, their function, and the manner oftheir use. During the course of their research, the authors uncovered previously unknown torpedoes as well as critical primary sources of information. This major reference is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of how the Civil War was fought."This book provides a valuable contribution to a sparsely documented but critically important aspect of land and sea warfare...[The authors] illuminate many of the practical details of Confederate and Union experiences that bring this subject alive in a way that should be of interest to students of military history."--from the Introduction byWilliam Schneck, Colonel (USAR), US Army Corps of Engineers

Tanks were the beasts of the Second World War, machines designed to destroy anything and anyone in their path. Throughout the summer of 1944, the Allied forces readily employed tanks and armored vehicles to gain ground in the bloody campaign of Normandy. Heavily armed, they provided a kind of support which no number of infantrymen could offer, battling their way through enemy lines with their guns blazing. From the US 2nd Armored Division named 'Hell on Wheels' to the British 'Achilles' tank, the encounters they had in battle were explosive. This volume of the Casemate Illustrated series explores the Normandy invasion from the perspective of the Allied Armored divisions, looking at how armored vehicles played a central role in the many battles that took place. It includes over 40 profiles of tanks and armored vehicles, from the American Sherman and Stuart tanks to the bulldozers and amphibious vehicles designed for the beach. With detailed diagrams and many photos illustrating the composition of the Allied armored divisions and tank regiments present at Normandy, this volume explains the crucial part played by tanks in gaining a foothold in Normandy after the D-Day landings, as well as the significance of many other types of armored vehicles.

At a time when most handguns were limited to six rounds, the ten-shot Mauser caught the attention of the world for its unprecedented firepower and formidable high-velocity 7.63x25mm cartridge. This saw its ultimate expression in the first-ever select-fire handgun - the `Schnellfeuer' machine pistol, fed by a detachable magazine and offering both full-automatic and single-shot modes. The C 96 was the first semi-automatic pistol to see combat, arming both sides in the Second Anglo-Boer War, and seeing service with the German, Russian, Chinese and other militaries. Widely purchased commercially, it was carried by none other than Winston Churchill in the Sudan and South Africa, became prized by the Irish Republican Army and Soviet revolutionaries, and even armed Han Solo in the `Star Wars' movies. Featuring full-colour artwork and an array of revealing photographs, this is the engrossing story of the C 96 Broomhandle Mauser, the ground-breaking semi-automatic pistol that armed a generation of military personnel, adventurers and revolutionaries at the turn of the 20th century.

Jousting is the most iconic form of mounted combat. For more than five hundred years, the sport itself, and the chivalric culture that surrounded it, took on almost mythical qualities. Here, Tobias Capwell explains the glitz and glamour of a sport that attracted enormous popular audiences throughout the late middle ages. Though he deals almost exclusively with weapons and warriors, Capwell tells a story not of war and destruction, but of pageantry and valour. This is the story of the armour of peace. The book forms part of a series of introductions to aspects of the Royal Armouries' collection of arms and armour. Written by specialists in the field, they are packed full of fascinating information and stunning photography. Royal Armouries is the national museum of arms and armour, with sites at Leeds, the Tower of London and Fort Nelson, Hampshire.

Created by a long-forgotten Austrian nobleman, Adolf Odkolek von Augezd, the air-cooled Hotchkiss machine gun was the first to function effectively by tapping propellant gas from the bore as the gun fired. Although the Hotchkiss would be overshadowed by the water-cooled Maxim and Vickers Guns, it proved its effectiveness during the Russo-Japanese War. The gun, quirky though it was, was successful enough to persuade Laurence Benet and Henri Mercie to develop the Modele Portative: a man-portable version which, it was hoped, could move with infantrymen as they advanced. Later mounted on tanks and aircraft, it became the first automatic weapon to obtain a 'kill' in aerial combat. Though it served the French and US armies during World War I (and also the British in areas where French and British units fought alongside each other), the Odkolek-Hotchkiss system was to have its longest-term effect in Japan. Here, a succession of derivatives found favour in theatres of operations in which water-cooling could be more of a liability than an asset. When US forces landed on Saipan, Guam and Iwo Jima, battling their way from island to island across the Pacific, it was the 'Woodpecker' - the Type 92 Hotchkiss, with its characteristically slow rate of fire - which cut swathes through their ranks. Supported by contemporary photographs and full-colour illustrations, this title explores the exciting and eventful history of the first successful gas-operated machine gun.

Weapons of myth and scandal, that is the best way to describe the spigot weapons deployed by the British in the Second World War. Unlike conventional mortars, a spigot mortar does not have a barrel through with the round is fired. Instead, the general concept involves a steel rod - the 'spigot' - onto which the bomb is placed before it is fired. This design was, as David Lister reveals, the basis of a number of successful weapons used during the Second World War. The myth of the PIAT man-portable anti-tank weapon is, for example, tied closely to British paratroopers struggling in the ruins of Arnhem with an inadequate design, one inferior to the German equivalent. Similarly, the myth of the Blacker Bombard is of a useless weapon, one of dubious quality, that was dumped on the unsuspecting Home Guard. In reality, neither scenario is the case. Both weapons were devastating creations of war, often superior to any other nation's counterpart. At sea, the Hedgehog anti-submarine weapon was another powerful spigot weapon. It was undoubtedly capable of sweeping the U-boats from the sea and even winning the Battle of the Atlantic before it had really begun. That it did not is one of the great scandals of the Second World War, one hidden by wartime secrecy until now. In _Defeating the Panzer-Stuka Menace_ the author explores a large number of spigot weapons from the Second World War, many of which were created by the fertile mind of one of Britain's great weapon inventors, Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker.