Giving Up the Gun
by Edward W. Wood, Jr.
In Giving Up the Gun, Edward W. Wood, Jr. chronicles his transformation from citizen-soldier to pacifist. Born to a family with male ancestors who fought in every armed conflict dating back to colonial wars with Native Americans and the American Revolution, soldiering was an essential part of his family legacy. The stories of his forefathers and the guns they carried were handed down from generation to generation. Stories of heroism told through the prism of military service were woven throughout his childhood.
Wood came of age in the 1940s and eagerly enlisted to serve in WWII. He was sent to France in the fall of 1944, where he was severely injured in battle. Not only did he face life-changing physical wounds, but he would also suffer panic attacks, anxiety, depression, and PTSD for the rest of his life.
In stark and poetic prose, Wood recounts his journey toward wholeness. After enrolling at the University of Chicago on the GI Bill, he found relief in friendships with fellow veterans. The splendor of the natural world offered solace. Books provided comfort. Over many years, therapy helped him dissect the tension between his mother’s gift of conscience and his father’s romance with weapons. Decades after being wounded, he grew to understand how he could ground himself emotionally from his experiences in WWII by surrendering every gun he owned, thereby gaining an inner peace that had otherwise eluded him.
Wood argues that gun owners will forever oppose policy makers who would legislate the curtailment of gun ownership. He believes a more viable way forward could be to inspire gun owners to relinquish weapons of their own free will, so they can arrive at a previously unimagined liberation from fear, similar to his own.
Giving Up the Gun is timely, personal, and valuable for today’s readers. Wood’s insights provide us with a novel solution to the devastating gun violence that shadows our society.
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Author Ed Wood 