American Gun

One of the great pleasures of working on American Gun was reacquainting myself with the Battle of Saratoga.

As it happens, I wrote a trilogy of novels set during the Revolution, and had done a lot of research on the battle – but unfortunately never got use to it.

Pretty much none of it’s in Gun, since the focus in that chapter is, well, on guns – the long rifle in particular – not the overall battle so much, or (what I was interesting for my novels) the use of spies in the war. But American Gun reminded me just how important individuals are in a conflict, and how they shape the different tactics an army takes.

American Gun’s first chapter begins by introducing a sniper whose shot arguably turned the final battle decisively in favor of the Americans. There are some problems figuring out who took the shot, as we mention in the book. But still, if the rebels didn’t have precision weapons and men who could use it, the complexion not just of that battle but of the entire war would have been much different.

Would we have won independence?

Sure. But a good argument can be made that the conflict would have gone on even longer. Even if the Americans would have won at Saratoga – the odds were heavily stacked in their favor by the time the armies met – removing snipers and their weapons from the Americans' “toolkit” would have made that campaign and the war much harder. And a good case can be made – and it’s made in American Gun – that the Battle of Cowpens, a small but pivotal American victory in the south, might have been lost. It certainly would have looked a lot different.

You can order American Gun on line at B&N and Amazon, and my favorite bookstore, Merritt Books. You can also get it in “real” stores, starting Tuesday. The book's profits go entirely to the Kyle family, unlike American Sniper, where Chris donated the money to the families of two deceased SEALs he served with in Iraq.