Tommy: The Gun That Changed America

John Taliaferro Thompson had a mission: to develop a lightweight, fast-firing weapon that would help Americans win on the battlefield. His Thompson submachine gun could deliver a hundred bullets in a matter of secondsùbut didn't find a market in the U.S. military. Instead, the Tommy gun became the weapon of choice for a generation of bootleggers and bank-robbing outlaws, and became a deadly American icon. Following a bloody decadeùand eighty years before the mass shootings of our own timeùCongress moved to take this weapon off the streets, igniting a national debate about gun control. Critically-acclaimed author Karen Blumenthal, author of Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition and Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929, reveals the fascinating story of this famous and deadly weaponùof the lives it changed, the debate it sparked, and the unprecedented response it inspired in Tommy: The Gun That Changed America.

Author: Karen Blumenthal

Publisher: Square Fish

Publication Date: Aug 01, 2017

Number of Pages: 240 pages

Language: English

Binding: Paperback/Young Adult Nonfiction

ISBN-10: 125011540X

ISBN-13: 9781250115409