After Newtown: Guns in America is an unprecedented exploration of America’s enduring relationship with firearms. From the first European settlements in the New World to frontier justice, from 19th-century immigrant riots to gang land violence in the Roaring Twenties, from the Civil War to Civil Rights, guns have been at the center of America’s national narrative. In April 1775, it took the Minutemen roughly fifteen seconds to load, aim, and fire each musket at the advancing British Redcoats in Lexington, Massachusetts. In December 2012, at a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza was able to fire off dozens of rounds with an assault-type weapon in a mere sixty seconds. With an estimated 300 million firearms in circulation, the United States is saturated with firearms and overwhelmed by the human toll they’ve taken—over thirty people die every day from a gun-related injury. After Newtown: Guns in America traces the evolution of guns in America, their inextricable link to violence, and the clash of cultures that reflect competing visions of America’s identity.