When TIME decided to undertake this week's story about the beleaguered Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the editors knew immediately where to turn. Senior writer Erik Larson, who joined the staff in February, is a recognized authority on America's gun culture, having published a series of groundbreaking front-page stories on the subject for the Wall Street Journal and a critically acclaimed book, Lethal Passage: The Journey of a Gun (Crown; 1995).
Larson's interest in guns and gun control was aroused in the early 1980s by a series of teenage drive-by shootings that rocked the quiet neighborhood in Maryland where he...
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