Customer Reviews

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(130)

 

 

I was intrigued by this book. I don't live in either camp--rabidly pro- or anti-gun. I shot on a rifle and pistol team throughout high school and college (lo, these 25 years past), and since have fired a black powder flintlock and percussion cap pistol a few times because I wanted to see what they were like; but I own no firearms today. However, the fact that both camps are so unalterably polarized makes anything that purports to be a scholarly, unbiased investigation captures the attention.

It looked both promising--extensive reference section and appendices--and as if it might offer a startling revelation. But as I read, I found disconcerting inconsistencies just within the context of his own text. (For instance, at one point he claimed that the cost of a musket was two months' wages for an early colonist; shortly thereafter, for a period of time not much later than that earlier mentioned, he affirms it cost the equivalent of 1-1 1/2 years wages for an artisan. This bothered me; as I continued to read, I started to notice some missing items--such as giving us a count for the evidence that he proffers--often--that probate records show that guns are rare. How many records? What percentage of the population submitted information to probate? Statistical information that without which his charts and graphs are meaningless.

Furthermore, he asserts--more than once--that it took "3 minutes" to load and fire a muzzle-loading rifle. It would have to be the dead of night, and the shooter blind drunk, to take that long. Never having fired a flintlock before, I tried to load and fire 10 times in succession, and was able to average 50 seconds per load. (The smoke was horrible, and near the end fouling was slowing me down--but NOT to 3 minutes). This tells Bellesiles either has never verified at least this statement, or has no interest in investigating something that supports his premise. A small thing--but it was personal. I'd tried it.

Moreover, a question that clearly came to my mind--and should to anyone who reads the book--was never addressed. He repeatedly makes the assertion that the early governments would confiscate weapons if they felt they needed them, without compensation; in such a circumstance, it seems that the desire to conceal ownership of an allegedly very expensive investment would lead to under-reporting in all cases, including probate. Moreover, it's clear the governments considered it the individuals' responsibility to provide weapons for their militia duty. I can't believe people of the day would feel much different than they would today--you want me to do this, give me what I need. I paid good money for *my* weapon. The simplest way to do _that_ is just show up empty-handed.

The references are bloated with references to Shakespeare and documents that would as clearly be biased toward one view as the ones that he eschews as being clearly biased toward the "traditional" views. Others have claimed to have followed up on his references, and found selective editing and out-of-context quotes; I frankly don't care enough to do so.

I wasted my money, and I wasted my time. Bellesiles has an axe to grind, and worked it throughout this book; I don't know if he's anti-gun, or just wanted a controversial scholarly submission. In either case, I'm sorely disappointed.

Before you buy this book, please take note of the problems which have come from it.

1. The Bancroft Prize which this book won in 2001 was withdrawn in 2002 due to the fact that Bellesiles "had violated basic norms of acceptable scholarly conduct" during the time when he researched and wrote the book.

2. Bellesiles was employed as a professor of history at Emory University until he was forced to resign due to "unprofessional and misleading work" that he put into this book.

3.Bellesiles said in an interview with a National Review reporter that he used "San Fransisco records from 1849-50 and 1858-59", but when the reporter confronted him with the fact that those documents were destroyed during the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, he claimed that his memory was bad and told the reporter to check some libraries, when she did, they did not have the documents either.

In conclusion, this book is a fabrication, and anyone who has studied the history of the United States military from The Revolution to The War of 1812 to The Civil War knows that the majority of units were militia, made up of citizen soldiers who armed themselfs, due to the culture that didn't love guns, but saw them as useful tools, and quite often at that. But Mr. Bellesiles does not want you to know that, so that he may infleuence political opinions.

I don't care about the gun control debate. ARMING AMERICA is an example of what happens when an author writes without a shred of intellectual honesty. Bellesiles lifts quotes out of context with such care and regularity that I can only conclude it was deliberate. On multiple occasions the text he cites bears no resemblance to the interpretive statements he makes. These are not errors, it is fraud. Eighteenth century military history in general, and how armies fought in particular, is so little understood in academic history that interpretations so obviously wrong (to scholars in military history) are actually praised in academic journals.

I found Michael Bellesiles' book "Arming America" to be most amusing. I have to be amused, otherwise I would be outraged that such drivel could come from an alleged historian. Let me start at the beginning:
His survey of probate records covers only those who had wills and probate proceedings. These people were typically rich urbanites who had no need to hunt and could rely on neighbors for help if attacked. Since there was usually at least one person in the house at all times, the risk was slim. This survey does NOT represent the typical American at the time, but the typical elite snob. And most of them STILL had guns, based on the VERY PROBATE RECORDS HE CLAIMS TO HAVE USED.
American settlers, as he notes and then contradicts, used rifles for hunting. Muskets, which were military weapons, were inaccurate other than in volley fire, so were not desirable for frontier use, hence the lack of interest in buying surplus ones after the War of Independence. It did not take "two days" to find game, "luck" was not needed, and the typical game would be rabbit or squirrel, which are far more plentiful than deer. One would be unlikely to slaughter chickens regularly for meat, as he suggests, unless one had a sufficient breeding population to replace those slaughtered. It would actually be far easier, despite his amusing theories on hunting, to bag a woodchuck, squirrel, or rabbit. And they all taste like chicken.
Gunpowder is merely charcoal, sulfur, and saltpetre. Sulfur occurs naturally, charcoal is readily made, and saltpetre takes little effort to distill from cow manure. As late as 1873, the Zulus were using stones as projectiles in their muskets. This destroys his myth that owning a gun made one "dependent" on the government for lead and powder.
Flintlocks are remarkably simple devices, with only two springs and three major moving parts. Where he got the notion otherwise I have no idea. They function well, are easy to clean (they do not take "all day"), and displaced the earlier bow because of ease of use, despite a slower rate of fire and greater expense.
He makes an issue of gunsmiths not advertising in major newspapers of the day. Only the wealthy could afford luxury guns, and newspaper ads were expensive. Had he bothered to review old blacksmithing manuals, he would find that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM contained instructions for manufacturing, finishing, treating, and repairing non-luxury firearms, including building rifling cutters to rifle the barrels. Hardly the thing to waste paper on if these items were as scarce as he claims. There is a video available from Colonial Williamsburg in which their resident smith manufactures one from raw materials in one day.
While it is true that the Continental Army (which numbered in the hundreds in 1795) sneered at the militia, ask any reservist today, and one will find the same attitude persists. He clearly has forgotten that it was the militia that drove the British from Washington during the War of 1812, the Army not being within a hundred miles at the time. So much for their relative effectiveness.
Early weapons were rusty? This much is true. Petroleum lubricants not being available in that era, bear grease had to suffice. As we all know, North America tends to have climate that encourages rust. What else could they do? How does surface rust affect the operation of a firearm?
Finally, one must ask, "So what?" So few Americans owned arms (if we concede for sake of argument that he is correct, which he is not). Few people, even with the modern advantage of email, actually write to their local newspapers or elected officials. Should we assume by this that there is no right to free speech?
He makes excellent use of the negative proof method--that lack of mention equals lack of presence. By that logic, outhouses were also scarce. I have found very few historical references to them. One tends to report only the unusual as news, and firearms were not unusual in Colonial America.
Bellisiles is all too typical of the true gun nuts in society--those who use their position to destroy civil rights from some misguided father-knows-best philosophy. He should evaluate his goals. If he wishes to be an historian, he should stick to history and do better research--like not referring to probate records from San Francisco in the 1850s, which no one on the planet (besides himself, apparently) has seen, since they were destroyed in a fire in 1906. If not, then he should be honest and declare himself a politician. And I don't need 600 pages to make that point.

As this book does not contain reproducible research, I cannot recommend it to any serious individual wanting a reputable source concerning the gun control debate.

To try to get the answer he wants (that widespread gun ownership in 19th century America was a myth, not the truth), Bellesiles cites a number of sources. Unfortunately, some of the records (San Francisco probate records) could not have been consulted by Bellesiles as they were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906. Other sources, when checked by other scholars, proved not to say what Bellesiles claimed.

When confronted with this, and asked to show his research notes, he claimed that his notebooks were pulped by a sprinkler accident in his office. Problem is, when the sprinkler accident was replicated by others, it was proved that his notebooks (if soaked as claimed) could have been dried out and recovered without much trouble. (Libraries do that sort of thing all the time)

...

Columbia University's Board of Trustees has rescinded a major prize its selection committee had awarded to an author despite early red flags that his book on gun-ownership rights was based on flawed research.

On Friday, the university announced that its trustees had voted to rescind the prestigious Bancroft Prize given in April 2001 to former Emory University history Professor Michael Bellesiles for his book "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture."

The thesis of the book is that there were few firearms in early America and most of the guns that did exist were old and broken -- an assertion that provoked vigorous and widespread skepticism before the prize was awarded.

The Bancroft Prize is given for works judged to be "of enduring worth and impeccable scholarship that make a major contribution to our understanding of the American past."

Columbia said its trustees made their decision based on a review of an investigation of scholarly misconduct by Emory University and other assessments of professional historians. These investigators concluded that Bellesiles "had violated basic norms of acceptable scholarly conduct."

Bellesiles was allowed to provide his input before Columbia made its decision.

The book "had not and does not meet the standards ... established for the Bancroft Prize," the trustees found.

Columbia also requested that Bellesiles return $(...)in prize money. It is the first time the prize has been withdrawn since it was first awarded in 1948.

Columbia's recent evaluation of "Arming America" by its trustees, administration and faculty contrasts sharply with the original review by the Bancroft selection committee in 2001. Columbia's prize committee issued the award though there were several indication it was based on flawed research.

"Arming America" was embraced by many scholars because it appeared to confirm what several already believed: that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right to bear arms, and individual gun rights were unimportant to America's Founders.

In October, Bellesiles resigned from his professorship at Emory after a panel of historians built on the work of critics (most notably James Lindgren of Northwestern University) and found the author was "guilty of unprofessional and misleading work."

The National Endowment for the Humanities also withdrew its name from a Newberry fellowship awarded to Bellesiles for a second book on guns. (The NEH and the William & Mary Quarterly were the first to seriously examine the charges against Bellesiles).

Columbia's provost, Jonathan Cole, told National Review his school's decision came at the end of a careful process that began in the fall of 2001. But before the Bancroft Prize was awarded the previous April, scholars already had shown that Bellesiles's main probate data -- through which he tried to show that few guns were inherited as parts of estates -- were mathematically impossible. Further, he cited records that were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.

When asked by National Review last fall, Arthur Goren -- a Columbia emeritus professor who was then chair of the prize committee -- said he wasn't aware of a public debate or serious questions about "Arming America" when the committee considered it: "We reviewed 150 books over a four-month period," he said. "As you undertake that process and seek to recognize innovative work, among other things, it is probably inevitable that some of the books will touch on controversial topics."

A scholarly manuscript detailing most of these problems was sent, however, to one of the original Bancroft panel members, Rutgers historian Jan Lewis.

On April 18, 2001, the day Columbia presented Bellesiles his prize, the Columbia College Conservative Club held a roundtable discussion on the author's work. No Bancroft committee member or member of the school's History Department attended.

"On April 9, I e-mailed members of the History Department and the Bancroft committee with a summary of the case against Bellesiles, including some clear cases of fraud," said Ron Lewenberg, then president of the CCCC. "I received no responses." Lewenberg repeated the mailings with the same result.

"I was not allowed to put the packets in the mailboxes of professors and staff, so with the approval of the secretary, I placed them on the desk," he said. "According to a friendly TA (teaching assistant), whose anonymity I have kept secret for the protection of his career, Professor Eric Foner saw the handouts and threw a fit. All of the packets were thrown out."

On Tuesday Foner, who was not on the committee, said he had no recollection of the event and found Lewenberg's account "implausible."

"Anybody can leave anything in the mailbox of professors," he said. "Our mailboxes are in a public hallway."

Last week, Foner defended the process the committee followed, saying it worked "on a basis of trust."

"We assume a book published by a reputable press has gone through a process where people have checked the facts," he said. "Members of prize committees cannot be responsible for that."

Joyce Malcolm, a history professor at Bentley College who has written a book on the Anglo-American conception of gun rights and who was an early skeptic of Bellesiles's research, disagrees.

"The sad part is that if the prize committee had taken the trouble to read the serious criticism of the book before bestowing this award, they would never have been put in this embarrassing situation," she said. "The award was meant to be for a work of impeccable scholarship, and it was clear before April 2001 that 'Arming America' was not such a book."

It is unfortunate that upon considering this book, that one should, if honest to themselves, undertake a study to see if Bellesiles' peer historians have "signed off" on it.

Having read the exhaustive 50+ page report: "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal" by JAMES LINDGREN of Northwestern University Law School, one discovers that the all of the fifteen "major contentions of Arming America turn out to be false." (save that the militia was ineffective), in a well documented fashion. Also the work of Clayton Cramer document (often with actual copies of original documents from the period) what appears to be the art of historical revisionism at its highest.

This book is now regularly cited in University classes as an example of research and peer review failure.

If you are hoping to study the history of fradulent and unprofessional research, or failures in academic review, I should say you have found your book.

If, on the other hand, you wish to discover anything factual about guns and early America, you have no legitimate choice but to look elsewhere.

Mr. Bellesiles' book has been exposed as a fraud, a deception, a pack of lies and distortions. Data has been falsified or fabricated, facts have been twisted, large portions of original text have been rewritten or omitted, laws and statutes have been mutilated or taken out of context, and it's written with an obvious political motive in mind.

When asked to reproduce his research, the explanation Mr. Bellisiles' offered up was the collegiate-level equivalent of "The dog ate it". He has been stripped of the Bancroft Award (the first time this has ever happened), and deservedly so.

The book's only redeeming quality is that it's a perfect example of outcome-based research for a politically-correct age.

In 2001 "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture" received the prestigious Bancroft Prize for American history from Columbia University.

In October 2002 the author, Michael Bellesiles, resigned as a professor at Emory University, after an independent panel of scholars strongly critized his research, saying that he was "guily of unprofessional and misleading work."

In December 2002 Columbia rescinded their award to Bellesiles; in a statement issued by the school's trustees, they said that Bellesiles' "book had not and does not meet the standards ... established for the Bancroft Prize."

An online search will quickly and easily verify that the above information is true - something that sadly cannot be said of many of the "facts" contained in Bellesiles' book.

Whatever your views on gun control may be, avoid "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture" like the plague - it has clearly and widely been discredited as bad, bad, bad history.

This book teaches several important lessons:

First, don't depend on appearances. The author looks like a man writing history, basing it on original sources. In fact, when the sources are checked, they've been distorted, or they just don't exist. The book is a pack of lies.

Second, some people can't bear to admit that someone on 'their side' is wrong. With one exception (the reader from Carlisle PA), the only favorable reviews are from people who share the author's political objective of increasing U.S. gun control. Their point seems to be "Gun control is a good thing, so this author must be telling the truth, even if no one else can find the sources he says he cites." There's lots of things to be said on both sides of the gun control issue, but making things up and passing them off as history won't help sort out the gun control controvery.

Finally: praising a book full of lies as 'thought provoking', or claiming that 'only years of research will sort this out' is a good way to make yourself, AND YOUR CAUSE, look ridiculous. Whether you think gun control is a good or bad idea, one thing is certain: this book helped the anti-gun control movement immensely. The NRA should give the author a testimonial. Handgun Control, Inc. should hire a hitman.

For more than you may wish to know about the author's LIES, see: Lindgren, James. Fall from grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles scandal. (Reviewing Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture.) 111 Yale Law Journal 2195, 2195-2249 (June 2002)