The New Yorker chose American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 for its running list of the best books of 2023. Editors wrote: "One of the most unexpected questions raised by their history of the semi-automatic rifle, which has been used by the perpetrators of many of the worst mass shootings in American history, is the following: What if the edgelord identity embraced by many mass shooters is not the result of alienation or mental illness but instead speaks to a successful marketing push of an industry doing business as usual."
