Running Guns


Book Description

This volume is about the guns that fuel the huge toll of deaths in the world's most bloody conflicts at the turn of the century. Whether it is Africa, Sri Lanka or even Chechnya and Afghanistan, it is not heavy weaponry or hi-tech devices that kill the most people, but the flood of cheap, easy to get, small arms that has swept over so many countries in the 80s and 90s. Crime rates involving guns within countries have also soared, as South Africa and Kenya, for example, have experienced. Yet a lot of this cross-border arms trade is illegal. So much so that several governments, including the United States, Canada and Mexico, are now pressing for rapid negotiation of a new global treaty on illegal trafficking in small arms.




Run to the Sound of the Guns


Book Description

As part of an elite special operations unit at the fighting edge of the Global War on Terrorism, Nicholas Moore spent over a decade with the US Army's 75th Ranger Regiment on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. In this compelling biography, a detailed narrative of gruelling life on the ground combines with accounts of some of the most dramatic search and rescue operations of the period to tell the true story of life on the line in the War on Terror. Charting his rise from private to senior non-commissioned officer, this title follows Moore as he embarks on a series of dangerous deployments, engaging in brutal street combat and traversing inhospitable terrain in pursuit of Taliban fighters and Iraq's Most Wanted. Including revelatory first-hand accounts of high-profile special operations missions including the tense rescue of Private First Class Jessica Lynch and the search and rescue mission for US Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell, Moore recounts, in vivid detail, the realities of life on the front line.







The Gun


Book Description

The author, a New York Times reporter, traces the invention and mass distribution of the AK-47 assault rifle, and its effects on war. He traces the invention of the assault rifle, following the miniaturization of rapid-fire arms from the American Civil War, through World War I and Vietnam, to present-day Afghanistan, where Kalashnikovs and their knockoffs number as many as 100 million, one for every seventy persons on earth. It is the weapon of state repression, as well as revolution, civil war, genocide, drug wars, and religious wars; and it is the arms of terrorists, guerrillas, boy soldiers, and thugs. From its inception to its use by more than fifty national armies around the world, to its role in modern-day Afghanistan, he discusses how the deadly weapon has helped alter world history.




Ghost Guns


Book Description

With thorough analysis and balanced reporting, Ghost Guns: Hobbyists, Hackers, and the Homemade Weapons Revolution is an essential resource for readers seeking to understand the rise of homemade firearms and future options for managing them. For more than a century, strict gun control was possible because firearms were produced in centralized industrial factories. Today, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, combining old and new technologies, threatens to upend this arrangement. An increasing number of hobbyists, "makers," technology provocateurs, and sophisticated criminals are proving that you don't need a factory to make guns anymore. The security challenges of this transformation are increasingly apparent, but the technologies behind it hold tremendous potential, and while ignoring the security implications would entail risks, the costs of new policies also must be evaluated. "Do-it-yourself," or DIY, weapons will bring significant ramifications for First and Second Amendment law, international and homeland security, crime control, technology, privacy, innovation, and the character of open source culture itself. How can a liberal society adjust to technologies that make it easier to produce weapons and contraband? Informative and thought-provoking, Ghost Guns: Hobbyists, Hackers, and the Homemade Weapons Revolution carefully analyzes the technical, legal, social, political, and criminological trends behind this challenging new area of illicit weapons activity.




Tommy Gun


Book Description

A military and cultural history of the infamous World War II firearm documents its notorious use by mobsters and NRA members as well as its ubiquitous presence in Hollywood films, charting its many names and role as a symbol of 20th-century culture.







The Falklands Guns


Book Description

The Oerlikon twin 35mm anti-aircraft gun was the one weapon in the Argentine armory which had a major impact on the British air campaign during the Falklands Conflict in 1982. Indeed, General Mario Benjamin Menéndez, transient Argentine Governor of Las Islas Malvinas, proudly boasted that: ‘The anti-aircraft gunners were the only Argentine forces on the Malvinas not to be beaten directly by the British and can take pride in being the first and the last to fire on the enemy.’ Following the Argentine surrender, what were then the latest of these Swiss-built all-weather Skyguard radar-directed guns, which had been purchased by the Argentine Government for £30 million, were recovered from the Falklands’ battlefields by a young squadron leader who recognized their value to the RAF for airfield defense. That officer, Michael Fonfé, was then handed the task of creating two Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment squadrons from scratch to operate the guns. This story of the Falkland Guns begins with an account of the experiences of three Argentine anti-aircraft artillery units during the Falklands War, drawing in part on many original Argentine documents the enemy gunners left behind, being unable to take them with them as prisoners of war. Comparisons are drawn with the inferior British equivalents by the gunners who had to man them and the obvious benefits the capture of the new Oerlikons would be to the RAF. After successfully incorporating Nos. 2729 and 2890 Squadrons into the RAF Regiment’s structure – which included women in combat roles for the first time – Michael Fonfé was promoted to Wing Commander. He was then handed responsibility for all RAF ground-based air defense weapons during the long years of the Cold War.




Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader


Book Description

Far from always having been an isolated nation and a pariah state in the international community, North Korea exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War era. With one foot in the socialist Second World and the other in the anticolonial Third World, North Korea occupied a unique position as both a postcolonial nation and a Soviet client state, and sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. State-run media coverage of events in the Third World shaped the worldview of many North Koreans and helped them imagine a unified anti-imperialist front that stretched from the boulevards of Pyongyang to the streets of the Gaza Strip and the beaches of Cuba. This book tells the story of North Korea's transformation in the Third World from model developmental state to reckless terrorist nation, and how Pyongyang's actions, both in the Third World and on the Korean peninsula, ultimately backfired against the Kim family regime's foreign policy goals. Based on multinational and multi-archival research, this book examines the intersection of North Korea's domestic and foreign policies and the ways in which North Korea's developmental model appealed to the decolonizing world.




Running Hot


Book Description

Undercover and on the hunt for a killer, two gifted psychics take passion to a whole new level in this electrifying New York Times bestselling Arcane Society novel. Luther Malone is an ex-cop who walks with a cane. Grace Renquist is a librarian who can read auras. Their only common link is the Arcane Society, the secretive paranormal organization that has teamed them up to find a killer. But even before they reach their hotel in Maui—where they’ll be posing as honeymooners—Grace and Luther feel the electric charge between them. Problem is, they need to remain vigilant day and night, because operatives for the underground group Nightshade are pouring into the luxury resort like there’s a convention. And these criminals aren’t just high-level sensitives: They’ve enhanced their talents with a potent—and unpredictable—drug. And as Grace knows all too well, if you don’t control your powers, your powers will control you....