Malcolm Gladwell's The American Way of Killing was published in 2026 and discussed on Real Time with Bill Maher on October 3. He argues assault rifle bans mostly restrict cosmetic attachments, that handguns kill more people in mass shootings than assault rifles, and that homicide is confined to a tiny subset of young men, citing Andrew Papachristos's Chicago study finding 400 of 50,000 residents at risk of shooting or being shot. He has since added that Reagan would have died if shot before 1940 while McKinley would survive today, and that Madison wrote the Second Amendment to protect slave patrols, with its grammar tying the right to militia service. Whether the concentration finding supports the book's broader argument remains contested.