Balance of Power

    The jurisprudence of gun lawsuits and the Second Amendment was also an important subject. I read every significant legal decision regarding the Second Amendment and lawsuits against gun companies, as well as a number of scholarly articles on these subjects. I am grateful to the following legal experts for their help: Fred Baron, Arthur Bryant, Leah Castella, Owen Clements, John Coale, Leslie Landau, Linda Lipson, and Dennis Henigan. Thanks as well to Victor Schwartz and James Wooten for their important observations regarding gun lawsuits and tort reform.

    I was fortunate to have the advice of a number of prominent advocates of gun safety. I begin with my current and former colleagues at the Brady Campaign: Mike Barnes, Ellen Moran, and Tony Orza. I learned much from the Web site for the Brady Campaign (www.bradycampaign.org; www.bradycenter.org) and that of its grassroots affiliate, the Million Mom March (www.millionmommarch.com). I am also grateful to the following members of Americans for Gun Safety: Jon Cowan, Jim Kessler, Matthew Bennett, Michael Harrington, Lisa Kimbrough, and Meghan Sherman. Finally, I am deeply grateful to two women who, having lost loved ones to gun violence, speak to this tragedy as advocates in the most important way possible: Mary Leigh Blek and Carole Kingsley.

    I was not as fortunate with gun rights advocates. My calls and letters requesting time with the principal officers of the National Rifle Association went unanswered; apparently, and perhaps understandably, they did not wish to meet with a novelist affiliated with the Brady Campaign. Nonetheless, that choice was theirs, and I regret being unable to present their thoughts. I did have off-the-record talks with two persons affiliated with the NRA, and immersed myself in NRA publications. Thus the SSA's public rhetoric and positions on gun rights closely reflects that of the NRA. In particular, the article I attributed to the SSA magazine in Chapter Two of Part One includes quotations from or close paraphrases of an actual, much longer article in the NRA magazine America's First Freedom. Similarly, Charles Dane's speech at the Washington Monument includes brief passages from two speeches given by Charlton Heston, then the President of the NRA, and Wayne La Pierre, its executive director. I am very grateful to Beth Lavach, who has extensive experience in Congressional relations on behalf of the gun industry, for her advice on legislative matters. Also of great assistance were two gun rights advocates whose efforts at compromise sometimes put them in conflict with the NRA, Richard Feldman and Robert Ricker.

    One of the interesting benefits of my research is that I came away with some real sympathy for the executives of gun companies, many of whom value guns for their quality and craftsmanship. These executives face a difficult dilemma, caught as they are between gun safety advocates and the lawyers who represent them, on the one side, and the NRA, which—in addition to its dominant presence in Washington, D.C.—reaches many of their customers. For these reasons, the NRA has an immense power over the gun industry—perhaps even, as has been demonstrated in the past, the potential to create a credible threat of such crippling economic harm that an individual company fears being forced out of business. Special thanks to Paul Januzzo, Ken Jorgenson, Bob Scott, and Ed Shultz for sharing their diverse perspectives as current or former executives of Glock and Smith & Wesson.

    Gun violence is the leading cause of death in domestic violence incidents. My outstanding colleagues at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, Janet Carter and Esta Soler, helped me present the dynamic of an abusive marriage, and Esta was kind enough to review the manuscript. Also of great value were several publications by the Fund. And Susan Breall, Sarah Buehl, and Juan Cuba helped me present both the legal and personal aspects of this tragedy.

    A number of people advised me on other subjects: Letitia Baldrige, former social secretary to the Kennedy White House, concerning the Kilcannon's wedding preparations; Fr. John Blaker with respect to the religious aspects of the wedding; Katie Couric on the nature of the media competition for the Lara Kilcannon interview; Alan Dershowitz with respect to the intricacies of the Kilcannons' privilege claims; Dr. Kenneth Gottlieb and Dr. Rodney Shapiro regarding the psychological issues surrounding the Bowden's marriage, and the reactions of both Kerry and Lara Kilcannon to the murders; San Francisco Homicide Inspector Napoleon Hendrix on the details of the murders; John Phillips and Mary Louise Cohen on the role of inside informants in complex litigation; and Terry Samway of the Secret Service regarding the problems surrounding the protection of the Kilcannons and the attempts to protect Lara's family. All helped enrich the texture of this novel.