Malcolm Gladwell on Why We Need More Cops and Why Assault-Rifle Bans Don't Work

Malcolm Gladwell in Hudson, N.Y., on Sept.

9, 2024. —Peter Fisher—The New York Times/Redux Malcolm Gladwell is one of America’s foremost chroniclers of curious social phenomena and what’s behind them.

In The Tipping Point , he examined why things seem to suddenly change.

In Blink , he scrutinized the power and limits of snap judgments.

In Outliers , he delved into why some people achieve extraordinary success.

In his first book set entirely in the U.S. (out Sept.

29), The American Way of Killing, which is based on a 2023 season of his podcast Revisionist History , he probes into America’s continuing struggle with gun violence.

On the eve of his 12-stop book tour, Gladwell told TIME that Americans on both sides of the gun-control argument are not being honest—about the police, about the Second Amendment, and about what really causes gun homicides.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You’ve been interested in crime for some time.

Why did it take you so long to get to guns? My early books were about the importance of environment and context in shaping our behavior.

You don't really get to guns from that perspective.

I had to work through a lot of my interests in the environment before I could turn around and say, "Now wait a minute, what about this?” Also, I was much more interested in understanding universal questions about criminality, and this book is really about very America-specific things.

You've subtitled it The Invention of an Epidemic .