Arming America, The Origins of a National Gun Culture
Encyclopedia
Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf
, 2000) by Michael A. Bellesiles
is the only book in the history of the prestigious Bancroft Prize
to have had its award rescinded. The revocation occurred after Columbia University
's Board of Trustees decided that Bellesiles had "violated basic norms of scholarship and the high standards expected of Bancroft Prize winners."
arose after the Civil War and that contrary to myth, it did not have its roots in America's colonial and frontier
eras. The book holds that guns
were uncommon during peacetime in America during the colonial, early national
, and antebellum
periods, when guns were little used and the average American's proficiency in use of firearms was poor. Bellesiles maintains that more widespread use and ownership of guns dates to the Civil War
following advances in manufacturing
and a consequent reduction in price and improvement in accuracy.
in 2001; but because the book's thesis bore upon ongoing political controversies about gun control
and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
, gun rights advocates immediately attacked it. Actor Charlton Heston
, then-president of the National Rifle Association
, called the book's argument "ludicrous." Conversely, a review by Roger Lane
in The Journal of American History noted that with research that was “meticulous and thorough,” Bellesiles had "attacked the central myth behind the National Rifle Association's interpretation of the Second Amendment," and Lane declared Bellesiles’s evidence so formidable that “if the subject were open to rational argument,” the debate would be over.
Clayton Cramer
, a software engineer, gun enthusiast, and early critic of Bellesiles, later argued that the reason "why historians swallowed Arming America’s preposterous claims so readily is that it fit into their political worldview so well.... Arming America said things, and created a system of thought so comfortable for the vast majority of historians, that they didn’t even pause to consider the possibility that something wasn’t right." Historian Peter Charles Hoffer, himself an advocate of gun control, lent support to Cramer’s charge when, in a 2004 examination of the Bellesiles case, he noted that influential members of the historical profession had indeed “taken strong public stands on violence in our society and its relation to gun control.” For instance, the academics solicited for blurbs by Bellesiles’s publisher Alfred A. Knopf
“were ecstatic in part because the book knocked the gun lobby.”
Bellesiles energized this professional consensus by attempting to play “the professors against the NRA in a high-wire act of arrogant bravado.” For instance, he replied to Heston’s criticism by telling the actor to earn a PhD before he criticized the work of scholars. He pointed out that Cramer was “a long time advocate of unrestricted gun ownership” while he himself was a simple scholar who had “certain obligations of accuracy that transcend current political benefit.” After Bellesiles claimed he had been flooded by hate mail, both the American Historical Association
and the Organization of American Historians
endorsed a resolution condemning the alleged harassment. As Hoffer later wrote, Bellesiles was convinced that whether the entire profession agreed with “his stance on gun ownership (and I suspect most did), surely academic historians would not let their expertise be impugned by a rank and partisan amateur like Cramer.”
In the end, however, the politics of the issue mattered less to historians "than the possibility that Bellesiles might have engaged in faulty, fraudulent, and unethical research." As critics subjected the historical claims of the book to close scrutiny, they demonstrated that much of Bellesiles' research, particularly his handling of probate records, was inaccurate and possibly fraudulent. This criticism included noting several serious errors in the tables published in The Journal of American History article, namely, that they did not provide a total number of cases and gave percentages that "were clearly wrong."
In two scholarly articles, law professor James Lindgren
of Northwestern University
noted that in Arming America, Bellesiles had
Critics also identified problems with Bellesiles's methods of citation. Cramer noted that Bellesiles had misrepresented a passage by George Washington
about the quality of three poorly prepared militia
units as if his criticism applied to the militia in general. (Washington had noted that the three units were exceptions to the rule.) Cramer wrote, "It took me twelve hours of hunting before I found a citation that was completely correct. In the intervening two years, I have spent thousands of hours chasing down Bellesiles’s citations, and I have found many hundreds of shockingly gross falsifications."
The scholarly investigation confirmed that Bellesiles's work had serious flaws, calling into question both its quality and veracity. The external report on Bellesiles concluded that "every aspect of his work in the probate records is deeply flawed" and called his statements in self-defense "prolix, confusing, evasive, and occasionally contradictory." It concluded that "his scholarly integrity is seriously in question."
Bellesiles disputed these findings, claiming to have followed all scholarly standards and to have corrected all errors of fact known to him. Nevertheless, with his "reputation in tatters," Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing the resignation of his professorship at Emory by year's end.
, the first such action in the history of the prize. Alfred A. Knopf
, publisher of Arming America, did not renew Bellesiles's contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities
withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library
had granted Bellesiles. In 2003, Arming America was republished in a revised and amended edition by Soft Skull Press
. Bellesiles continued to defend the book's credibility and thesis, arguing that roughly three-quarters of the original book remained unchallenged.
Historians who initially admired Arming America ceased to defend Bellesiles. The nationally prominent historian Garry Wills
, who had enthusiastically reviewed Arming America for the New York Times, later said, in a 2005 interview on C-SPAN
, "I was took. The book is a fraud." Wills noted that Bellesiles "claimed to have consulted archives he didn't and he misrepresented those archives," although "he didn't have to do that," since "he had a lot of good, solid evidence." Wills added, "People get taken by very good con men."
Historian Roger Lane
, who had reviewed the book positively in the Journal of American History
, offered a similar opinion: "It is entirely clear to me that he's made up a lot of these records. He's betrayed us. He's betrayed the cause. It's 100 percent clear that the guy is a liar and a disgrace to my profession. He's breached that trust." Historian Pauline Maier
reflected that it seemed historians had "ceased to read carefully and critically, even in the awarding of book prizes."
As Hoffer concluded, "Bellesiles's condemnation by Emory University, the trustees of the Bancroft Prizes, and Knopf provided the gun lobby with information to blast the entire history profession....Even though H-Law, the Omohundro Institute
, the OAH
, and the AHA
rushed to his side and stated principled objections to the politicization of history, they hesitated to ask the equally important question of whether he had manipulated them and betrayed their trust."
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
, 2000) by Michael A. Bellesiles
Michael A. Bellesiles
Michael A. Bellesiles is a former professor of American colonial and legal history at Emory University best known as the author of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture , a book that won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in 2001...
is the only book in the history of the prestigious Bancroft Prize
Bancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...
to have had its award rescinded. The revocation occurred after Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
's Board of Trustees decided that Bellesiles had "violated basic norms of scholarship and the high standards expected of Bancroft Prize winners."
Thesis
The central theme of Arming America is that America's gun cultureGun culture
The gun culture is a culture shared by people in the gun politics debate, generally those who advocate preserving gun rights and who are generally against more gun control...
arose after the Civil War and that contrary to myth, it did not have its roots in America's colonial and frontier
Frontier
A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. 'Frontier' was absorbed into English from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"--the region of a country that fronts on another country .The use of "frontier" to mean "a region at the...
eras. The book holds that guns
Güns
Güns or Guens may refer to:* Kőszeg, Hungary * Kőszeg Mountains, Hungary * Akiva Güns , birth name of Akiva Eger, a Hungarian-Polish rabbi- See also :* Guns * Gün, a surname...
were uncommon during peacetime in America during the colonial, early national
History of the United States
The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
, and antebellum
History of the United States (1789–1849)
With the election of George Washington as the first president in 1789, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting the program of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the government assumed the Revolutionary war debts of the state and the national...
periods, when guns were little used and the average American's proficiency in use of firearms was poor. Bellesiles maintains that more widespread use and ownership of guns dates to the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
following advances in manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
and a consequent reduction in price and improvement in accuracy.
Scrutiny
The book garnered many enthusiastic professional reviews and won the prestigious Bancroft PrizeBancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...
in 2001; but because the book's thesis bore upon ongoing political controversies about gun control
Gun control
Gun control is any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens...
and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights.In 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court issued two Second...
, gun rights advocates immediately attacked it. Actor Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
, then-president of the National Rifle Association
National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit 501 civil rights organization which advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection...
, called the book's argument "ludicrous." Conversely, a review by Roger Lane
Roger Lane
-External links:**...
in The Journal of American History noted that with research that was “meticulous and thorough,” Bellesiles had "attacked the central myth behind the National Rifle Association's interpretation of the Second Amendment," and Lane declared Bellesiles’s evidence so formidable that “if the subject were open to rational argument,” the debate would be over.
Clayton Cramer
Clayton Cramer
Clayton E. Cramer is a historian, author, and software engineer. He played an important early role in documenting errors in the book Arming America by Michael A. Bellesiles, a book that was later proven to be based on fraudulent research. His work was cited by the United States District Court for...
, a software engineer, gun enthusiast, and early critic of Bellesiles, later argued that the reason "why historians swallowed Arming America’s preposterous claims so readily is that it fit into their political worldview so well.... Arming America said things, and created a system of thought so comfortable for the vast majority of historians, that they didn’t even pause to consider the possibility that something wasn’t right." Historian Peter Charles Hoffer, himself an advocate of gun control, lent support to Cramer’s charge when, in a 2004 examination of the Bellesiles case, he noted that influential members of the historical profession had indeed “taken strong public stands on violence in our society and its relation to gun control.” For instance, the academics solicited for blurbs by Bellesiles’s publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
“were ecstatic in part because the book knocked the gun lobby.”
Bellesiles energized this professional consensus by attempting to play “the professors against the NRA in a high-wire act of arrogant bravado.” For instance, he replied to Heston’s criticism by telling the actor to earn a PhD before he criticized the work of scholars. He pointed out that Cramer was “a long time advocate of unrestricted gun ownership” while he himself was a simple scholar who had “certain obligations of accuracy that transcend current political benefit.” After Bellesiles claimed he had been flooded by hate mail, both the American Historical Association
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
and the Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
endorsed a resolution condemning the alleged harassment. As Hoffer later wrote, Bellesiles was convinced that whether the entire profession agreed with “his stance on gun ownership (and I suspect most did), surely academic historians would not let their expertise be impugned by a rank and partisan amateur like Cramer.”
In the end, however, the politics of the issue mattered less to historians "than the possibility that Bellesiles might have engaged in faulty, fraudulent, and unethical research." As critics subjected the historical claims of the book to close scrutiny, they demonstrated that much of Bellesiles' research, particularly his handling of probate records, was inaccurate and possibly fraudulent. This criticism included noting several serious errors in the tables published in The Journal of American History article, namely, that they did not provide a total number of cases and gave percentages that "were clearly wrong."
In two scholarly articles, law professor James Lindgren
James Lindgren
James Lindgren is a professor of law at Northwestern University. Born in 1952 in Rockford, Illinois, Lindgren graduated from Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School , where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He received his Ph.D...
of Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
noted that in Arming America, Bellesiles had
- purported to count guns in about a hundred wills from 17th- and 18th-century Providence, Rhode IslandProvidence, Rhode IslandProvidence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
, but these did not exist because the decedents had died intestate (i.e., without wills); - purported to count nineteenth-century San Francisco County probate inventories, but these had been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire1906 San Francisco earthquakeThe San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
; - reported a national mean for gun ownership in 18th-century probate inventories that was mathematically impossible;
- misreported the condition of guns described in probate records in a way that accommodated his thesis;
- miscited the counts of guns in nineteenth-century Massachusetts censuses and militia reports,
- had more than a 60% error rate in finding guns listed as part of estates in Vermont records; and
- had a 100% error rate in the cited gun-related homicide cases of seventeenth-century Plymouth, MA.
Critics also identified problems with Bellesiles's methods of citation. Cramer noted that Bellesiles had misrepresented a passage by George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
about the quality of three poorly prepared militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
units as if his criticism applied to the militia in general. (Washington had noted that the three units were exceptions to the rule.) Cramer wrote, "It took me twelve hours of hunting before I found a citation that was completely correct. In the intervening two years, I have spent thousands of hours chasing down Bellesiles’s citations, and I have found many hundreds of shockingly gross falsifications."
Emory investigation and resignation
As criticism grew and charges of scholarly misconduct were made, Emory University conducted an internal inquiry into Bellesiles's integrity, appointing an independent investigative committee composed of three leading academic historians from outside Emory. Bellesiles failed to provide investigators with his research notes, claiming the notes were destroyed in a flood.The scholarly investigation confirmed that Bellesiles's work had serious flaws, calling into question both its quality and veracity. The external report on Bellesiles concluded that "every aspect of his work in the probate records is deeply flawed" and called his statements in self-defense "prolix, confusing, evasive, and occasionally contradictory." It concluded that "his scholarly integrity is seriously in question."
Bellesiles disputed these findings, claiming to have followed all scholarly standards and to have corrected all errors of fact known to him. Nevertheless, with his "reputation in tatters," Bellesiles issued a statement on October 25, 2002, announcing the resignation of his professorship at Emory by year's end.
Aftermath of the scandal
In 2002, the trustees of Columbia University rescinded Arming Americas Bancroft PrizeBancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...
, the first such action in the history of the prize. Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
, publisher of Arming America, did not renew Bellesiles's contract, and the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
withdrew its name from a fellowship that the Newberry Library
Newberry Library
The Newberry Library is a privately endowed, independent research library for the humanities and social sciences in Chicago, Illinois. Although it is private, non-circulating library, the Newberry Library is free and open to the public...
had granted Bellesiles. In 2003, Arming America was republished in a revised and amended edition by Soft Skull Press
Soft Skull Press
Soft Skull Press is an independent publisher founded by Sander Hicks in 1992, and run by Richard Eoin Nash from 2001 to 2009. In 2007, Nash sold Soft Skull to Counterpoint LLC, where it continues to function as a division of the press...
. Bellesiles continued to defend the book's credibility and thesis, arguing that roughly three-quarters of the original book remained unchallenged.
Historians who initially admired Arming America ceased to defend Bellesiles. The nationally prominent historian Garry Wills
Garry Wills
Garry Wills is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and prolific author, journalist, and historian, specializing in American politics, American political history and ideology and the Roman Catholic Church. Classically trained at a Jesuit high school and two universities, he is proficient in Greek and Latin...
, who had enthusiastically reviewed Arming America for the New York Times, later said, in a 2005 interview on C-SPAN
C-SPAN
C-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
, "I was took. The book is a fraud." Wills noted that Bellesiles "claimed to have consulted archives he didn't and he misrepresented those archives," although "he didn't have to do that," since "he had a lot of good, solid evidence." Wills added, "People get taken by very good con men."
Historian Roger Lane
Roger Lane
-External links:**...
, who had reviewed the book positively in the Journal of American History
Journal of American History
The Journal of American History is the official academic journal of the Organization of American Historians. It covers the field of American history and was established in 1914 as the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, the official journal of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association...
, offered a similar opinion: "It is entirely clear to me that he's made up a lot of these records. He's betrayed us. He's betrayed the cause. It's 100 percent clear that the guy is a liar and a disgrace to my profession. He's breached that trust." Historian Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier is a popular scholar of the American Revolution, the preceding era and post-revolutionary United States. She is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ....
reflected that it seemed historians had "ceased to read carefully and critically, even in the awarding of book prizes."
As Hoffer concluded, "Bellesiles's condemnation by Emory University, the trustees of the Bancroft Prizes, and Knopf provided the gun lobby with information to blast the entire history profession....Even though H-Law, the Omohundro Institute
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture was founded in 1943 and is jointly sponsored by The College of William & Mary and The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. In 1996, the College and Colonial Williamsburg added Omohundro to the Institute's name in recognition of a generous...
, the OAH
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
, and the AHA
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
rushed to his side and stated principled objections to the politicization of history, they hesitated to ask the equally important question of whether he had manipulated them and betrayed their trust."
Editions of the Book
- Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) ISBN 0-375-70198-2
- Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, 2d ed. (Brooklyn, New York: Soft Skull Press, 2003) ISBN 1-932360-07-7
Further reading
- Peter Charles Hoffer, Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud—American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004): 141-171.
- "Report of the Investigating Committee in the matter of Professor Michael Bellesiles," July 10, 2002
- "Columbia's Board of Trustees Votes to Rescind the 2001 Bancroft Prize," press release, Columbia University, December 16, 2002
- James Lindgren, "Fall From Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal," Yale Law Journal (2002)
- James Lindgren and Justin Lee Heather, "Counting Guns in Early America," William & Mary Law Review (2002)
- Michael A. Bellesiles, Weighed in an Even Balance. Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press, 2003.
- Clayton E. Cramer, "Why Footnotes Matter: Checking Arming Americas Claims," Plagiary (2006)