Guns, Blacks, and Steel: American Cities After the Civil Rights Era

With the advent of federal civil rights legislation in the 1960s, America’s cities went to war. Washington D.C., New Orleans, Baltimore, Memphis, Philadelphia, and St. Louis became urban combat zones as extreme black-on-black gun violence exploded in the streets. Urban whites became refugees, fleeing to the safety of white-flight suburbia. And the implosion of property values for both commercial and residential urban real estate made equity the unspoken casualty of America’s new urban war. Paul Kersey documented the collapse of Detroit in the underground bestseller Escape From Detroit, published one year before the city’s 2013 bankruptcy. Now, in Guns, Blacks, and Steel, Kersey shows how cities like Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Rochester, and Savannah are on course for the same type of economic Armageddon that has destroyed the former Motor City. The war continues — but how can it be stopped? Today, even as lawmakers propose new, draconian gun laws — laws that would disarm the law-abiding citizens of America — Kersey provides the most comprehensive book yet revealing just who is committing the bulk of gun crime across the nation.