
One Nation Under Guns
How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $13.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Dan Bittner
-
By:
-
Dominic Erdozain
About this listen
This “brilliant and gut-wrenching” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) takedown of American gun culture argues that the nation’s founders did not intend the Second Amendment to guarantee an individual right to bear arms—and that this distortion of the record is an urgent threat to democracy.
“At once eye-opening and enraging, One Nation Under Guns is that rare book that can help change the way we live in this country.”—Eddie S. Glaude Jr., bestselling author of Begin Again
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
More than a hundred lives are lost to firearms every day in America. The cost is more than the numbers—it is the fear, the anxiety, the dread of public spaces that an armed society has created under the tortured rubric of freedom. But the norms of today are not the norms of American history or the values of its founders. They are the product of a gun culture that has imposed its vision on a sleeping nation.
Historian Dominic Erdozain argues that we have wrongly ceded the big-picture argument on guns: As we parse legislation on background checks and automatic-weapons bans, we fail to ask what place guns should have in a functioning democracy. Taking readers on a brilliant historical journey, Erdozain shows how the founders feared the tyranny of individuals as much as the tyranny of kings—the idea that any person had a right to walk around armed was anathema to their notion of freedom and the peaceful republic they hoped to build. They wrote these ideas into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, ideas that were subsequently affirmed by two centuries of jurisprudence.
And yet the twin scourges of racism and nationalism would combine to create a darker American vision—a rogue and reckless freedom based on birth and blood. It was this freedom, not the liberty promised by the Constitution, that generated our modern gun culture, with its mystic conceptions of good guys and bad guys, innocence and guilt. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court reinvented the Second Amendment in 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, an opinion that Erdozain convincingly eviscerates, many Americans had already acceded to the fiction: the unfreedom of an armed society. To save our democracy, he argues, we must fight for the founders’ true idea of what it means to be free.
©2024 Dominic Erdozain (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Strangers in the Land
- Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America
- By: Michael Luo
- Narrated by: Eric Yang
- Length: 17 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1889, while upholding Chinese exclusion, Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field characterized them as “strangers in the land.” Only in 1965 did America’s gates swing open to people like Luo’s parents, immigrants from Taiwan. Today there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States and yet the “stranger” label, Luo writes, remains. Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Strangers in the Land is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story.
-
-
Do not pass this up
- By LeeAnna on 06-08-25
By: Michael Luo
-
Empire of AI
- Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
- By: Karen Hao
- Narrated by: Karen Hao
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?
-
-
Well-researched. Timely. Informative. Karen is brilliant and kind!
- By Kahlil Andrews on 05-25-25
By: Karen Hao
-
Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
-
-
Describes a well funded international fascist cult
- By marwalk on 03-24-25
-
To Make Men Free
- A History of the Republican Party
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Republican Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession. While progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln’s vision and expanded the government, their opponents appealed to Americans’ latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. In the modern era, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles.
-
-
Fascinating read!
- By Marsha on 12-27-21
-
Wounded Knee
- Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On December 29, 1890, American troops opened fire with howitzers on hundreds of unarmed Lakota Sioux men, women, and children near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, killing nearly 300 Sioux. As acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson shows in Wounded Knee, the massacre grew out of a set of political forces all too familiar to us today: fierce partisanship, heated political rhetoric, and an irresponsible, profit-driven media.
-
-
sad but important history
- By Margaret Bowser on 04-08-23
-
The Violent Take It by Force
- The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy
- By: Matthew D. Taylor
- Narrated by: Asa Siegel
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the last decade, the Religious Right has evolved. Some of the more extreme beliefs of American evangelicalism have begun to take hold in the mainstream. Scholar Matthew D. Taylor pulls back the curtain on a little-known movement of evangelical Christians who see themselves waging spiritual battles on a massive scale.
-
-
Comprehensively Researched
- By Chuck Anderson on 09-25-24
-
Strangers in the Land
- Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America
- By: Michael Luo
- Narrated by: Eric Yang
- Length: 17 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1889, while upholding Chinese exclusion, Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field characterized them as “strangers in the land.” Only in 1965 did America’s gates swing open to people like Luo’s parents, immigrants from Taiwan. Today there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States and yet the “stranger” label, Luo writes, remains. Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Strangers in the Land is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story.
-
-
Do not pass this up
- By LeeAnna on 06-08-25
By: Michael Luo
-
Empire of AI
- Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
- By: Karen Hao
- Narrated by: Karen Hao
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?
-
-
Well-researched. Timely. Informative. Karen is brilliant and kind!
- By Kahlil Andrews on 05-25-25
By: Karen Hao
-
Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
-
-
Describes a well funded international fascist cult
- By marwalk on 03-24-25
-
To Make Men Free
- A History of the Republican Party
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Republican Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession. While progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln’s vision and expanded the government, their opponents appealed to Americans’ latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. In the modern era, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles.
-
-
Fascinating read!
- By Marsha on 12-27-21
-
Wounded Knee
- Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On December 29, 1890, American troops opened fire with howitzers on hundreds of unarmed Lakota Sioux men, women, and children near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, killing nearly 300 Sioux. As acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson shows in Wounded Knee, the massacre grew out of a set of political forces all too familiar to us today: fierce partisanship, heated political rhetoric, and an irresponsible, profit-driven media.
-
-
sad but important history
- By Margaret Bowser on 04-08-23
-
The Violent Take It by Force
- The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy
- By: Matthew D. Taylor
- Narrated by: Asa Siegel
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the last decade, the Religious Right has evolved. Some of the more extreme beliefs of American evangelicalism have begun to take hold in the mainstream. Scholar Matthew D. Taylor pulls back the curtain on a little-known movement of evangelical Christians who see themselves waging spiritual battles on a massive scale.
-
-
Comprehensively Researched
- By Chuck Anderson on 09-25-24
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
- By: Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?
-
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- By orders on 10-07-23
By: Steven Levitsky, and others
-
John Lewis
- A Life
- By: David Greenberg
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 24 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born into poverty in rural Alabama, Civil Rights icon John Lewis would become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He was a Freedom Rider who helped to integrate bus stations in the South, a leader of the Nashville sit-in movement, the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he made into one of the major civil rights organizations.
-
-
Really Great!
- By eliz on 04-26-25
By: David Greenberg
-
American Idolatry
- How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church
- By: Andrew L. Whitehead
- Narrated by: Andrew L. Whitehead
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Power. Fear. Violence. These three idols of Christian nationalism are corrupting American Christianity. Andrew Whitehead is a leading scholar on Christian nationalism in America and speaks widely on its effects within Christian communities. In this book, he shares his journey and reveals how Christian nationalism threatens the spiritual lives of American Christians and the church.
-
-
An “edge of inside” follow up to Jesus and John Wayne
- By Brette on 09-14-23
-
Erasing History
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Combining historical research with an in-depth analysis of our modern political landscape, Erasing History issues a dire warning for America and the world: the worst fascist movements of humanity’s past began in schools; the same place so many of today’s right-wing political parties have trained their most vicious attacks. Yale professor Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the right’s tactics and traces their inspirations and funding back to some of the most dangerous ideas of human history.
-
-
The bias attitude of the author
- By Elizabeth ohanna on 09-30-24
By: Jason Stanley
-
An African American and Latinx History of the United States
- By: Paul Ortiz
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
-
-
I had to return
- By Andrew Alvarez on 05-19-20
By: Paul Ortiz
-
America Last
- The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators
- By: Jacob Heilbrunn
- Narrated by: Kent Klineman
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America Last is a guide for the perplexed, identifying and tracing a persuasion—or the "illiberal imagination"—that has animated conservative politics for a century now. Since the 1940s, the Right has railed against communist fellow travelers in America. Heilbrunn finally corrects the record, showing that dictator worship is a longstanding tradition within modern American conservatism that cannot be ignored—and what it means for us today.
-
-
So frustrating
- By SarahMc on 03-13-24
By: Jacob Heilbrunn
-
Homegrown
- Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
- By: Jeffrey Toobin
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Toobin
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement. Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, “I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.” But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001.
-
-
Irresponsible Ramblings of a “Left Wing” Idiot
- By Jef Rasmussen on 09-23-23
By: Jeffrey Toobin
-
The Longest Con
- How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism
- By: Joe Conason
- Narrated by: Steve Marvel
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump's path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him.
-
-
America Needs to Know the Truth and Dangers of Trump
- By Tiberius on 12-01-24
By: Joe Conason
-
Loaded
- A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
- By: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment is a deeply researched - and deeply disturbing - history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present. As historian and educator Dunbar-Ortiz explains, in order to understand the current obstacles to gun control, we must understand the history of US guns, from their role in the "settling of America" and the early formation of the new nation, and continuing up to the present.
-
-
Don't bother
- By John Cashman on 12-26-18
-
Super-Infinite
- The Transformations of John Donne
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP—and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father’s consent, struggled to feed a family of ten children, and was often ill and in pain.
-
-
Oh but the narration…
- By David Benjamin on 01-01-23
-
Feminism Is for Everybody
- Passionate Politics
- By: bell hooks
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is feminism? In this short, accessible primer, Bell Hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her characteristic clarity and directness, Hooks encourages readers to see how feminism can touch and change their lives - to see that feminism is for everybody.
-
-
Excellent Introduction to Feminism
- By Listens-a-lot on 03-29-18
By: bell hooks
-
Black in Blues
- How a Color Tells the Story of My People
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey.
-
-
So many lessons in this book
- By Christina the Teacher on 02-04-25
By: Imani Perry
Critic reviews
“Brilliant and gut-wrenching. . . . As I read Erdozain’s book, I couldn’t stop sharing passages suggesting just how much we seem to have gotten wrong about the Second Amendment, and the grave results of that wrongness: a society in which we all—gun owners and non-gun owners alike—live beholden to the gun owners’ existential threat.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, New York Times Book Review
“In this extraordinary book, Dominic Erdozain pulls back the curtain on the American obsession with guns. There we find the violence of slavery, the ugliness of nativism and nationalism, and the history of lies and misinterpretation about the second amendment. We see how the myth of ‘the law-abiding citizen with a gun’—the good guy—contributes to America’s killing fields. At once eye-opening and enraging, One Nation Under Guns is that rare book that can help change the way we live in this country.”—Eddie S. Glaude Jr., New York Times bestselling author of Begin Again and Democracy in Black
“A scorching evisceration of how a disingenuous few and their allies warped the Constitution, weakened democracy, and waged war on reality to the point where the leading cause of death for children in America is now a bullet from a gun. . . . With withering prose and an arsenal of receipts, Dominic Erdozain exposes that the only thing more tortured than their argument is their justification for each new massacre in ‘the land of the free’—and even offers some welcome hope that we can stem the tide of eulogies before it’s too late.”—Cody Keenan, former chief speechwriter for President Barack Obama and bestselling author of Grace
Every American should read this
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Depressing and necessary
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
guns
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.