Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun

This devastating book begins with an account of a crime that is by now almost commonplace on December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-119 and several hundred rounds of ammunition tucked in his backpack. By days end, he had killed one teacher and severely wounded another.In Lethal Passage Erik Larson shows us how a disturbed teenager was able to buy a weapon advertised as the gun that made the eighties roar. In so doing, he not only illuminates Americas gun culture -- its manufacturers, dealers, buffs, and propagandists -- but also offers concrete solutions to our national epidemic of death by firearm. The result is a book that can -- and should -- save lives, and that has already become an essential text in the gun-control debate.