You know, the facts, as you state, law-abiding citizens — I guess the good guys — are actually responsible for much of America’s murder rate. Most gun deaths are the result of altercations within known groups — family or friends. So how is that still being, you know, totted out — or trotted out — as a legitimate defense?

 I think a lot of it is fear that transcends the facts and is larger in people’s minds than the empirical realities of what guns do. But I think, you know, the Trump excerpt shows that this is a culture war issue. I don’t know that his heart was ever really in it, you know. In his first book where he was thinking of running as an independent I think in 2000. You know, he chastised the Republican party for its slavish fidelity to the National Rifle Association, and he seemed perfectly willing at that stage to think in terms of gun control

the same after recent shootings, and then he was talked back. I feel that so much of this is confected. There was a big piece in the Washington Post on the AR-15 where conservative pundits were saying, “Well, no one really needed one, but it was a good way of, you know, turning out noses up to the left. So a lot of this is confected. And that’s one of the things that gives me hope that a younger generation could see through it — could see through the artifice of many of these arguments.

AMANPOUR: The full title of your book is One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy. How does it threaten our democracy?

Well, this is where I try to go beyond some of the many brilliant scholars who’ve talked about the 2nd Amendment and individual rights is to understand democracy really as a way of life, a vision of freedom. You know, democracy is more than how we elect our leaders or try to. It’s about living without fear of violence. It’s about freedom to interact with one another and trust. You know, political scientists talk about social capital.