"The United States is in many ways a model for the world, yet for one of the most fundamental of all human concerns, the imperative to keep ourselves and our loved ones free from harm, American ingenuity has failed. Unique in all of the developed world, America is bathed in violence. Our churches and schools, our movie theaters and dance clubs and music festivals are no longer safe places to congregate. Our politics is consumed by fear and intimations of violence, and our foreign policy is centered on the violence that we export to the world or can inflict on others. Violence is foundational to America, and has become, it seems, America's most insoluble problem. But to solve this problem, we must first understand it. The Violence Inside Us examines the roots of human violence itself and the propensity of people to harm themselves and each other. The result is a carefully researched, deeply emotional, and personal book that dissects America's violence obsession through an evolutionary, historical, and economic lens. And the book takes a hard look at one distinctly American feature: a firearms industry that has for decades manipulated and dominated politics and culture in order to maintain a ghastly status quo and prevent even the most basic anti-violence measure from being implemented. Following his profound personal transformation in the wake of the Newtown mass murder and his subsequent immersion in the intertwined issues of freedom and firearms, Senator Chris Murphy dedicated himself to examining America's obsession with violent acts and why we've tolerated them for so long, to deeply explore all of the arguments and the latest research on want works and what doesn't, and to establish the steps we must take to change. The Violence Inside Us is the extraordinary result"-- Provided by publisher.
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