A would-be mass killer enters a shopping mall and begins shooting. A civilian with a permit to carry a concealed firearm draws his pistol and approaches the killer. Seeing the pistol, the killer turns his own gun on himself and ends it. The armed citizen never does fire his pistol, but other people in the mall that might have become further victims of the killer are spared. (See the third from last paragraph below for a possible explanation of the killer 19s behavior.)

This is just one of the many examples that advocates of 1Ccommon sense 1D gun control ignore and even claim never occur. One of the ways they get around it is by compiling only incidents in which four or more people are murdered by a gun-toting killer. But when someone else on the scene has a gun, there are apt to be fewer than four victims. Gun control advocates not only take advantage of this in compiling their statistics, but even when there is a case in which a gunman did kill four people before being stopped by an armed citizen, they ignore that case, too.

Glenn Beck 19s 1CControl 1D provides statistics of his own as well as many anecdotes similar to the one above, citing locations, dates, and the names of the armed heroes. But he refuses to name the killers because so many of them wanted to become famous, and Beck won 19t give them the satisfaction 14even posthumously.

Also, quoting representative statements from politicians and pundits who advocate gun control, Beck argues against each contention with facts and a reasoned argument that seems very persuasive. When gun control advocates ridicule second amendment advocates by asserting that no one wants to take away their right to bear arms, Beck cites examples of gun control advocates who do state the desire to take all guns away from private citizens. Sometimes, it is the very individual who says that no one wants to take away all guns who, on another occasion, has expressed the desire and intention to take away all guns. (Maybe they have multiple personalities and don 19t know what their alters have said.)

One of the remarkable points that Beck makes is that even though we are seeing a rash of reports of mass shootings, especially by killers using rifles, these types of shootings are actually statistically rare and becoming fewer with every passing year. Somehow, the shock of having someone kill school children or theater-goers is so sensational that it makes it seem as if this kind of crime is epidemic. (I don 19t recall that Beck says so, but there is likely to be a copycat aspect that has made these types of shootings cluster together in time.) Yet the number of firearm deaths each year is almost entirely due to handguns while those that are due to rifles are few. This is no comfort, of course, if you or a loved one happen to be among the statistically rare victims of mass killers toting so-called military-style assault rifles (more accurately, military-style, assault-style rifles since they are not, in fact, either military or assault rifles but sports rifles made to look like military assault rifles). Still, neither does it make any sense 14common or otherwise 14to make a sweeping, special federal law to address no more than one or two percent of all murder weapons 14especially if the proposed law can be shown not to address the problem at all.

The above line of argument is what takes up the first part of Beck 19s book. The second part argues that violent video games are more of a proximate cause of mass shootings than is the availability of guns. This is also a persuasive argument, not to say that I am entirely persuaded. Among the curious factoids that support some sort of a societal cause rather than one related to the availability of guns, is that before 1975, when guns were as available as they ever have been, there were no public school shootings by students like what we 19ve seen since that year. Why did this phenomenon start in the last quarter of the twentieth century, not earlier? Another factoid more specifically suggestive of the video game thesis is that quite a number of the recent mass killers were dedicated video game players. This fact explains a couple of the significant components of their crimes. One is that many of them re-loaded their weapons before entering each new room so that they were fully loaded each time they confronted a new group of victims. Beck cites an expert who says that this technique 14which made these killers more effective killing machines and less vulnerable to an unarmed citizen who might stop them while they were reloading 14is generally unknown to all except policemen, soldiers, and video gamers.

Another factor that seems to be due to the influence of video gaming on these mass killers is that they view their attacks as if they were playing a game in which they achieve points for each victim they kill. One of the corollaries of this sick imposition of game rules on reality is that, because in a video game whoever kills a high scorer wins all of his points, if a policeman 14or, in the case of the mall shooter I described at the top of this review, an armed civilian 14kills the mass killer, he loses all of his points; but, if the killer commits suicide, he retains his points. This probably explains why the killer in my opening example killed himself rather than risk shooting it out with the armed man who was approaching him.

A topical book is blessed and cursed by being topical. Some of the material cited in 1CControl 1D is as recent as 2012. Not outdated, yet; but it will be some day, and then this book might become outdated because it does not include any facts after 2012. It will certainly be outdated if the gun control debate changes drastically or goes away entirely. On the other hand, the unlikelihood of this debate falling by the wayside is extreme. Even if it cools down for now, gun control will be back as a controversy sooner than we might expect. When it does return, the arguments in this book will still be at least useful. Any argument in favor of gun control ought to have to refute Beck 19s twin case against gun control and for video games as a precipitating cause of extreme gun violence. BTW, Beck does not think that outright banning of video games is necessarily a solution, but instead argues for better parental control of children 19s game playing. Many parents are unaware of how violent video games are and the low threshold for mayhem and murder reflected by game rating systems.

As always, a Glenn Beck book is a team effort into which we can at best presume that Beck himself had some input but where much of the research and writing was done by others. Beck takes primary credit as author but notes the names of other contributors without always specifying the extent of their roles. ( )

Glenn Beck refutes gun control proponents' claims based on selective research and popular misconceptions. He delves deeper than the one out of context finding from a decades old study. Beck also uses fact-based suppositions to defend a protection found in our Bill of Rights.

But none of this matters to those who dislike others' like for fire arms. Guns, the great equalizer, decrease the reliance of average Americans on benevolent government. As he recently said on his radio show: share this with those who agree, but don't have the true facts to affirm their gut instinct that guns are not evil. ( )