Eric Robertson

Interesting, heartfelt, but somewhat unbalanced

Revisado: 10-16-19

This book is about race and politics at least as much as it is about guns. It is a very personal tale and I found it very interesting.

By the author's account, his marriage ended following Trump's election soon after he said that he hates white people. He recounts very many personal stories of being mistreated by white people and clearly resents those experiences, and I don't see why he shouldn't. The author deserves to be treated as an individual person, not a black man, but so too do the people he collectively announced hate for.

The author describes getting intensely interested in guns, pursuing marksmanship training and becoming a certified instructor, then abandoning the pursuit. The author gives several accounts of innocent black men being killed by police and others with guns. The author goes into detail on the statistics of crime and gun ownership by ethnicity.

The author argues against using firearms for self defense and supports this with two stories of what he feels were unjustified uses of firearms in self defense. I agreed with him more than I disagreed, but clearly justified uses are not addressed. He describes people that concealed carry as vigilantes out to murder someone. He doesn't seem to allow for life circumstances and experiences to lead one to come to the conclusion that a firearm might some day be necessary to defend one's life. I am not giving the score that I am because I disagree with the author, but in part because there is little exploration of self defense where without the use of a firearm, a victim would have been killed. The author seems to believe that he would rather be a victim than defend himself in that case. I'd like to know why the author feels that way.

I can't critique the author for letting his race dominate so much of his life and thinking because I do not have his experiences, where the color of his skin matters or is noticed by probably nearly everyone he interacts with. But I think it is a damn shame that he let that and politics consume him to the degree that it ended his marriage. I feel sympathy for the author as a divorced and left-leaning person myself for the pain that this has brought him, even if I can't understand first-hand the anger and bitterness over being treated differently and often poorly because of the color of his skin.

I hope that the author can one day come to understand that for most people that legally carry a firearm, using it in defense is one of the last things they want to do, just above becoming a victim, possibly a dead or seriously injured one, of someone that chose to do them harm. The author doesn't seem to consider that fact, that some people are evil and care less for a person's life than the $20 their victim has in their pocket. Very few people are out there just itching to use a gun.

I think it is fantastic that the author took this journey, and as a white person, I hope that many more people of different ethnicities take this journey. I hope that many more get training and arm themselves for defense, because gun control has a racist history and I can't think of anything that will better protect people like the author that are an ethnic minority from becoming the victims of a reprehensible, racist act of violence.

It was a thought-provoking account to be certain, but I wish that the author considered more possibilities and explored more viewpoints, as open-minded as the author's account is.

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Excellent overview of concepts in physics

Revisado: 10-12-16

I write this review as an interested layperson, and that seems to be part of the intended audience. The book succeeded in introducing me to new material and imparting a greater understanding of our natural world. I found the material is dense and complicated at times due to my lack of background, but I was never entirely overwhelmed. This book is an excellent starting point to pique the interest of an interested student or any other curious person.

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Lifesaving information

Revisado: 09-30-16

I already follow a plant based diet but this book helped me make it healthier.

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