GUNS AND CONTROL.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob

"We are neither pro-gun nor anti-gun," proclaims the Gun Facts Project, an organization launched by San Francisco writer Guy Smith two decades ago. "We are pro-math and anti-BS."

Smith, a marketing consultant with a background in quantitative management, stays true to that ethos in Guns and Control, which summarizes reams of relevant data while evenhandedly faulting advocates on both sides of the debate for manipulating numbers to fit their agendas. The book nevertheless is apt to leave open-minded readers more skeptical of conventional responses to gun-related deaths.

That problem, Smith emphasizes, is multifaceted. In the United States, suicides account for nearly two-thirds of the deaths that gun control advocates misleadingly describe as the toll from "gun violence." The gun homicide rate has fallen dramatically since the early 1990s, although polling indicates that most Americans think otherwise. That misperception may have something to do with the publicity received by mass shootings, which represent a tiny percentage of gun homicides but have...