9 May 2015 TOMMY: THE GUN THAT CHANGED AMERICA by Karen Blumenthal, Roaring Brook, June 2015, 240p., ISBN: 978-1-62672-084-8

“Now as through this world I ramble

I see lots of funny men.

Some will rob you with a six gun

And some with a fountain pen.

But as through your life you travel

As through your life you roam

You won’t ever see an outlaw

Drive a family from their home.”

-- Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd”

“From the time the Bill of Rights was adopted until the 1930s, none of the handful of gun lawsuits that made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court addressed whether the Second Amendment gave individuals a right to own firearms. From the earliest days, settlers had restricted some gun ownership, for instance, by trying to stop firearms trading with Native Americans and forbidding slaves to have guns. Such efforts, including the disarming of blacks during Reconstruction, underscored a reality throughout American history: Those with guns held political power and those without firearms clearly did not.”

My grandparents, who lived through Prohibition and raised their children during the Great Depression, told us stories about the days of Al Capone, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Saturday Night Massacre.

Today’s kids don’t have similar live connections to those times. For them, TOMMY: THE GUN THAT CHANGED AMERICA provides a fascinating and colorful look at the most notorious gangsters in U.S. history. This “true crime” facet of Karen Blumenthal’s latest history book will spark the interest of and entertain many young readers. Other readers will be engaged by the many social and political issues surrounding  the manufacture, marketing, and sale of firearms in a free enterprise system.

Readers of this book might find themselves considering  whether the Second Amendment (the right to keep and bear arms) is as important as the First Amendment (freedom of speech) as gun proponents argue. Or is it as bogus and antiquated as Biblical verses that are cited to marginalize women and condemn gays?

What’s a Tommy gun? Check out the music video for Fergie’s “Glamorous” (featuring Ludacris) for an eyeful.

What’s the big deal about Tommy guns? Well, they were developed by John Thompson, a former Army officer who was an expert in weaponry. Thompson hoped to make a fortune selling the high-powered weapons to the military. When that didn’t work out, he found middlemen who peddled them to the Irish Republican Army and other revolutionaries, to companies that didn’t want to put up with their workers going out on strike, and to gangsters intent on killing one another. The Tommy gun’s ability to fire many bullets in mere seconds made for some lively--and deadly--times in America.

Blumenthal’s tale includes stories about J. Edgar Hoover and the early days of the federal agency that became the FBI. She chronicles the many attempts to restrict sales of various firearms and the rise of the National Rifle Association. Bringing us to the present, the author quotes President Obama speaking about all the teens being shot to death in his hometown of Chicago.

Is there anywhere else in the world where guns and gun play are so romanticized as they are in the U.S.? It scares the hell out of me to know that millions of preschoolers are practicing killing people every day in violent video games. What leads parents to teach and support such desensitizing and antisocial behavior? A careful read of TOMMY supplies an arsenal of facts about the way that a culture of weaponry developed in America.   

Returning to the  Woody Guthrie song, Karen Blumenthal’s TOMMY and Sheila Bair’s THE BULLIE$ OF WALL STREET might make odd but interesting literary bedfellows.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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