Under the Gun displays Niloufer Siddiqui’s meticulous research about a relatively fresh subject of violence as a strategy of political parties in Pakistan. Its three-fold analytical framework includes models of the intra-party infrastructure of violence (MQM), outsourcing to violence specialists (PPP] and forming electoral alliances with militant groups (PML-N), along with a dual model of adopting non-violence in the core area of support and violence in the party’s outpost (ANP). This fantastic study of formal and informal political actors in Pakistan unravels the role of state capacity, ethnicity, party organisation and local strongmen in the context of vote politics.