With sales exceeding 20 million per annum recently, Americans have been buying more guns over the past few years than ever before. As with any other product, guns have to be designed, manufactured, and marketed. Those tasks must be performed on an industrial scale. Weapons don’t magically appear in homes and hands, at ranges and shops. John Bainbridge Jr.’s Gun Barons: The Weapons That Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them is an entertaining and informative new history of the rise of America’s arms industry. It tells the story of how American gunsmithing went in the 19th century from the preserve of hobbyists and craftsmen in barns and on homesteads to an enterprise of dedicated factories and corporate entities.